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Love  and  marriage, 


3    T153    DDST33M5    M 


3: 


By  Ellen  Key 


The  Century  of  the  Child 
The  Education  of  the  Child 
Love  and  Marriage 


Love  and  Marriage 


By 

Ellen  Key 

Author  of**  The  Century  of  the  Child,"  etc. 


Translated  from  the  Swedish  by 
Arthur  G.  Ghater 


With  a  Gritical  and  Biographical  Introduction  by 
Havelock  Ellis 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 

Zbc  Ifcnicfterbocftcc  press 

1912 


Copyright,  igii 

BY 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


PublishtJ,  February,  igii 

Reprinted,  April,  1911  ;  May,  1911 

August,  iqii  ;   November,  1911 

February,  1912  ;  April,  1913 


Vbe  'ftnfcftetbocfter  fivces,  mew  K«rt 


PUBLISHERS'  NOTE 

In  this  treatise,  the  veteran  Swedish  reformer 
attacks  problems  the  most  vital  to  the  welfare  of 
the  human  race,  problems  which  have  throughout 
the  centuries  engaged  the  attention  of  leaders  of 
thought. 

The  writers  who  have  given  attention  to  the 
complex  subject  of  the  relations  of  the  sexes,  of 
the  obligations  of  the  state  in  the  control  of  these 
relations,  and  of  the  organisation  of  the  family  as 
the  foundation  of  society,  include  such  authors 
as  Plato,  Goethe,  Richter,  Rousseau,  Mary  Woll- 
stonecraft,  Fourier,  Comte,  Mrs.  Browning,  Mill, 
Ibsen,  Westermarck,  Charlotte  Gilman,  Havelock 
Ellis,  and  many  others. 

These  problems  are  complex,  and  the  difficulties 

presented  by  them  most  serious.     No  writer  has 

ever  yet  presented  solutions  that  could  be  accepted 

as  finally  satisfactory.     Ellen  Key  writes  with  a 

ofound    antagonism    to    the    philistinism    and 

pocrisy  which  have  characterised  much  of  the 

nsideration   given   by   the   community   to   the 

objects.     She  points  out  (as  has,  of  course,  been 

emphasised   by   many   earlier   writers)    that   the 

ignoring  of  an  evil  does  not  dispose  of  it,  and  that 


IV 


Publishers'  Note 


so  far  from  preserving  society  from  its  influence, 
the  burying  of  an  evil  merely  tends  to  increase  its 
corrupting  and  demoralising  results. 

Whether  or  not  the  reader  be  prepared  to  accept 
the  conclusions  and  recommendations  of  the  Swed- 
ish thinker,  he  must  recognise  that  these  conclu- 
sions represent  the  result  of  painstaking  and 
scholarly  thought  and  investigation.  Daring  and 
iconoclastic  as  they  may  be,  the  views  of  Ellen 
Key  are  presented  with  a  calmness  and  philosophy 
of  method  that  is  absolutely  free  from  any  trace 
of  sensationalism.  The  book,  which  is  being  dis- 
tributed in  half  a  dozen  languages  to  a  world's 
public,  must  be  accepted  as  a  most  important 
contribution  to  philosophic  thought. 

The  introduction  by  Havelock  Ellis,  himself  an 
authority  on  social  problems,  will  help  to  make 
clear  its  purpose  and  character. 

New  Yor^,  January,  191 1. 


CONTENTS 
Introduction  by  Havelock  Ellis 

CHAPTER 

I.     The    Course    of    Development    of 
Sexual  Morality 

II.  The  Evolution  of  Love    . 

III.  Love's  Freedom 

IV.  Love's  Selection 
V.  The  Right  of  Motherhood 

VI.  Exemption  from  Motherhood 

VII.  Collective  Motherliness 

VIII.  Free  Divorce  . 

IX.  A  New  Marriage  Law 


PAGE 

vii 


I 

57 
107 
140 
169 
200 
246 
287 
359 


INTRODUCTION 

Ellen  Key,  whose  most  important  book  is 
here  for  the  first  time  presented  in  English,  is 
no  stranger  in  the  English-speaking  world.  Her 
Century  of  the  Child  has  already  found  many 
appreciative  readers  in  America  as  well  as  in 
England.  Ellen  Key  is  descended  from  a  Scotch 
Highlander,  Colonel  M'Key  (probably  of  the  fa- 
mous MacKay  clan)  who  fought  under  Gustavus 
Adolphus,  and  she  attaches  no  little  significance 
to  this  ancestry.  She  has  always  interested  her- 
self in  English  matters,  and  is  well  acquainted 
with  the  life  and  literature  of  Great  Britain;  but 
she  belongs  first  and  foremost  to  Scandinavia. 

She  was  born  in  1849  in  the  Swedish  province  of 
Smaland,  on  a  country  estate  of  her  father.  He 
had  played  a  distinguished  part  in  the  Swedish 
parliament  as  an  avowed  radical,  but  his  wife 
was  a  representative  of  an  old  and  noble  family. 
Ellen,  their  eldest  child,  was  marked  from  an  early 
age  by  her  love  of  nature  and  of  natural  things. 
This  devotion  to  nature  may  be  considered  heredi- 
tary, for  her  great-grandfather  was  an  ardent 
disciple  of  Rousseau,  and  a  special  admirer  of 
Rousseau's  famous   treatise  on   Education.     He 

vii 


vill  Introduction 

gave  to  his  son  the  name  of  Emile,  which  was 
handed  down  to  Ellen  Key's  father.  It  was 
perhaps  owing  to  the  Rousseau  tradition  that  the 
young  girl  was  initiated  from  childhood  in  swim- 
ming, rowing,  riding,  and  other  exercises  then 
usually  reserved  for  boys.  At  the  same  time,  she 
loved  music  and  devoured  books  including  Scott's 
novels  and  Shakespeare's  plays.  An  early  en- 
thusiasm was  for  Goethe's  Hermann  and  Dorothea; 
it  may  be  said,  indeed,  that  the  ideal  of  natural, 
beautiful,  and  harmonious  living  for  which  that 
book  stands  has  never  left  Ellen  Key.  She  was 
educated  for  the  most  part  at  home  by  German, 
French,  and  Swedish  teachers,  but  it  may  easily 
be  believed  that  a  girl  of  so  much  individuality  of 
character,  so  impetuous  and  so  independent, 
proved  a  difficult  child  to  manage  and  was  often 
misunderstood.  One  may  divine  as  much  from 
the  sympathetic  attitude  towards  children  and 
the  reverence  for  their  healthy  instincts,  which 
are  revealed  in  The  Century  of  the  Child.  For- 
tunately young  Ellen  had  a  wise  and  discerning 
mother,  to  whom  she  owed  much;  with  a  fine 
intuition,  this  mother  overlooked  her  daughter's 
indifference  to  domestic  vocations  and  left  her  free 
to  follow  her  own  instincts,  at  the  same  time  exer- 
cising a  judicious  influence  over  her  development. 
While  still  a  young  girl,  the  future  author,  inspired 
by  Björnson  and  other  Scandinavian  writers,  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  devoting  herself  to  the  study  of 
the  condition  of  the  people   and  wrote  several 


Introduction  ix 

novels  on  peasant  life.  A  remark  of  her  mother's 
— that  her  daughter  surely  could  not  be  meant 
to  write  novels,  because  the  main  questions  for 
her  were  "the  questions  of  her  own  soul" — 
opened  her  eyes  to  the  truth  that  fiction  could 
not  be  her  vocation.  But  she  was  very  far  from 
knowing  what  her  life's  work  was  to  be,  and  her 
dreams  were  of  love  and  motherhood,  not  of  a 
career. 

With  Björnson  she  was  throughout  in  friendly 
relationship.  He  had  recognised  her  fine  abilities 
before  she  even  began  to  write,  and  she  on  her 
side  was  full  of  admiration  for  his  genius,  strength, 
and  goodness.  The  other  world-famous  writer  of 
Scandinavia  Ellen  Key  learned  to  know  through 
his  work  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  when  her  mother 
presented  to  her  Love's  Comedy,  Brand,  and  Peer 
Gynt ;  this  also  was  an  influential  event  in  her  life. 
Among  writers  to  whom  she  was  later  attracted 
were  Elizabeth  B.  Browning,  George  Eliot,  John 
Stuart  Mill,  Herbert  Spencer,  and  John  Ruskin. 

At  the  age  of  twenty- three,  Ellen  Key  began 
those  constant  excursions  to  all  the  great  centres 
of  Europe,  which  may  be  said  never  since  to  have 
ceased,  at  first  in  the  company  of  her  father, 
whose  secretary,  confidant,  and  almost  co-worker 
she  had  become,  and  she  was  thus  gradually  led 
to  writing  for  journals.  A  love  of  art  seems  to 
have  been  a  primary  inspiration  of  these  early 
journeys,  for  at  this  time  Ellen  Key  was  fascinated 
by  the  art  of  painting  as  she  has  always  been  by 


X  Introduction 

the  greater  art  of  living,  and  her  wide  knowledge 
of  pictures  has  often  happily  illuminated  ^her 
later  writings.  After  1880,  however,  when  her 
father,  as  the  result  of  an  agricultural  crisis,  lost 
his  property,  she  was  compelled,  at  the  age  of 
thirty,  to  choose  a  career  and  for  a  time  became 
a  teacher  in  a  girls'  school.  She  had  always  been 
attracted  to  teaching  and  many  years  earlier,  at 
the  instigation  of  Björnson,  had  studied  the  school 
system  of  Denmark.  At  a  later  period  she  gave 
courses  of  lectures  in  literature,  history,  and 
aesthetics.  For  twenty  years  she  occupied  the 
Chair  of  History  of  Civilisation  in  Sweden  at  the 
Popular  University  of  Stockholm. 

The  early  years  of  her  career  as  a  teacher  seem 
to  have  been  a  period  in  Ellen  Key's  life  of  much 
struggle,  hardship,  and  mental  depression  due 
to  personal  sorrows.  Amongst  these  were  the 
deaths  in  rapid  succession  of  several  distinguished 
women  with  whom  she  was  closely  associated, 
Sophie  Kowalevsky,  Anna  Charlotte  Leffler,  and 
(by  suicide)  Ernst  Ahlgren.  She  had  not  yet 
reached  full  development  nor  found  her  true  place 
in  the  world.  Although  her  abilities,  when  she 
was  still  a  girl  of  twenty,  had  been  discerned  by 
a  distinguished  Swedish  woman's  rights  advocate, 
Sophie  Adlersparre,  who  encouraged  her  to  write 
for  her  journal,  she  has  always  been  shy  and 
diffident,  with  none  of  the  self-confident  qualities, 
which  an  outsider  might  be  tempted  to  attribute 
to  her,  o:^  an  imposing  Corinne.     She  published 


Introduction  xi 

no  book  till  she  had  reached  middle-age — most 
of  her  best  books  belong  to  the  present  century — 
and  though  she  had  so  far  overcome  her  timidity 
as  to  discuss  literary  and  esthetic  questions 
before  a  public  audience,  she  had  yet  scarcely 
touched  openly  on  those  dangerous  and  difficult 
questions  which  arouse  fierce  antagonisms.  It 
required  some  assault  on  her  most  cherished 
convictions  to  arouse  her  latent  courage.  This 
occurred  when  an  old  Swedish  law  against  heresy 
was  revived  in  order  to  send  to  prison  some  young 
men  who  had  freely  argued  the  consequences,  as 
they  conceived  them,  of  the  Darwinian  doctrine 
in  religion  and  sexual  morals.  There  is  nothing 
so  sacred  to  Ellen  Key  as  the  right  to  personal 
opinion  and  personal  development ;  the  sight  of  any 
injustice  or  oppression  has  always  moved  her  pro- 
foundly, and  on  this  occasion  she  sprang  forward 
into  the  fray  like  a  lioness  in  defence  of  her  cubs. 
She  is,  in  the  opinion  of  Georg  Brändes,  *'a  born 
orator,"  and  she  publicly  brought  her  eloquence 
to  the  service  of  the  cause  she  had  at  heart.  Her 
discussion  of  the  question  was  marked  by  modera- 
tion, skill,  and  learning,  but  her  attitude  on  this 
occasion  served  to  define  publicly  her  real  position. 
Thenceforward  the  conventionally  respectable 
elements  of  Swedish  society  felt  justified,  accord- 
ing to  the  usual  rule,  in  dealing  out  reckless  and 
random  abuse  to  the  daring  pioneer.  She,  on  her 
side,  retained  her  serenity,  remaining  a  true 
woman,  with  much  of  the  mother  in  her  and  some- 


xii  Introduction 

thing  of  the  child,  but  before  long  her  literary- 
activities  developed  along  her  own  native  lines, 
and  in  full  maturity  she  frankly  approached  the 
essential  questions  of  life  and  the  soul.  A  con- 
siderable series  of  volumes  began  rapidly  to  appear, 
often  rather  informal  in  method  and  personal  in 
style,  but  freely  following  the  author's  thought  and 
feeling,  full,  not  only  of  ardent  enthusiasm  but 
of  fine  intuition  and  mellow  wisdom.  In  1903  was 
begun  the  publication  of  her  most  extensive  work, 
Lifslinjer  (Lines  of  Life),  of  which  work  the  first 
two  volumes  constitute  the  book  here  presented 
to  the  English  reader.  A  few  years  later  appeared 
The  Century  of  the  Child  and  in  1909  The  Woman's 
Movement,  by  many  regarded  as  the  best  statement 
which  has  been  made  of  that  movement  in  its 
widest  bearings.  Ellen  Key  has  also  published  a 
long  series  of  essays  on  literary  personalities — 
C.  J.  L.  Almquist,  the  Brownings,  Anna  Charlotte 
Leffler,  Ernst  Ahlgren,  etc. — who  have  appealed  to 
her  as  illustrating  some  aspect  of  her  own  ideals. 
The  latest  of  these  is  a  lengthy  study  of  Rahel 
Varnhagen. ' 

Ellen  Key  is  a  Scandinavian  and  may  perhaps 
even  be  said  to  be  a  typical  figure  of  the  country 
whose  foremost  woman   she  is.     Moreover,  she 

^  Many  of  the  facts  in  the  foregoing  pages  are  taken  from  a 
detailed  biographical  pamphlet  on  Ellen  Key  by  J.  F.  D.  Mossel 
in  the  series  of  Mannen  en  Vrouwen  von  Beteekenis  in  Onze  Dagen. 
The  reader  may  be  referred  to  an  interesting  account  of  Ellen 
Key,  from  personal  knowledge,  by  Miss  Helen  Zimmern,  in 
Putnam's  Magazine,  Jan.,  1908. 


Introduction  xiii 

loves  her  own  land  and  is  resolved  to  spend  the 
rest  of  her  life  in  a  house  she  proposes  to  build  in  a 
beautiful  part  of  the  country,  Alvastra,  near  Lake 
Wetter,  close  to  the  ruins  of  the  first  Swedish 
monastery,  a  spot  already  sacred  through  its 
associations  with  the  great  Swedish  saint,  Brigitta. 
But  the  prophet  is  a  prophet  everywhere  except 
in  his  own  country.  It  is  easy  to  find  estimable 
Swedes  who  are  far  from  anxious  to  claim  the 
honour  which  Ellen  Key  reflects  on  their  land.  It 
is  in  Germany  that  her  fame  has  been  made. 
To-day  the  Germans,  and  not  least  the  German 
women,  awaking  from  a  long  period  of  quiescence, 
are  inaugurating  a  new  phase  of  the  woman 
movement.  The  first  phase  of  that  movement 
dates  from  the  eighteenth  century,  and  its  ideals 
were  chiefly  moulded  by  a  succession  of  distin- 
guished English  women  who  claimed  for  their  sex 
the  same  human  rights  as  for  men :  the  same  right 
to  be  educated,  the  same  right  to  adopt  the 
occupation  they  were  fitted  for,  the  same  political 
rights.  In  the  course  of  a  century  these  claims, 
although  not  yet  completely  realised,  have  grad- 
ually been  more  and  more  generally  conceded  as 
reasonable. 

At  the  same  time,  however,  it  began  to  be  seen 
that  these  demands,  important  as  they  are,  by  no 
means  cover  the  whole  ground,  while,  taken  sepa- 
rately, they  were  liable  to  lead  in  a  false  direction; 
they  tended  to  masculinise  women  and  they 
ignored  the  claims  of  the  race.     In  their  ardour 


xiv  Introduction 

for  emancipation,  women  sometimes  seemed 
anxious  to  be  emancipated  from  their  sex.  Thus 
it  was  not  enough  to  claim  woman's  place  as  a 
human  being — especially  in  an  age  when  man  was 
regarded  as  the  human  being  par  excellence — butlt 
also  became  necessary  to  claim  woman's  place  in 
the  world  as  a  woman.  That  was  not,  as  it  might 
at  first  seem,  a  narrower  but  a  wider  claim.  For 
on  the  merely  human  basis  women  were  reduced 
to  the  level  of  competitive  struggle  with  men,  were 
allowed  to  bring  no  contribution  of  their  own  to 
the  solution  of  common  problems,  and,  worst  of 
all,  their  supreme  position  in  the  world  as  mothers 
of  the  race  was  altogether  ignored.  So  that  the 
assertion  of  the  essential  rights  of  women  as  women 
meant  at  the  same  time  the  assertion  of  the  rights 
of  society  and  the  race  to  the  best  that  women 
have  to  give.  It  was  certainly  by  no  accident  that 
the  Germans,  who  once  before  led  the  evolution 
of  Europe  by  their  triumphant  assertion  of  the 
fundamental  human  impulses  and  have  since  been 
pioneers  in  social  organisation,  should  take  the 
leading  part  in  the  inauguration  of  this  new  phase 
of  the  woman  movement. 

The  publication  of  Ellen  Key's  books  corre- 
sponded in  date  with  the  recent  tendency  of  the 
Germans  to  bring  to  bear  on  the  questions  of  sex 
their  characteristic  Teutonic  thoroughness  and 
practicality.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that 
this  Swedish  woman,  with  her  many-sided  vision 
of  the  world,  her  daring  yet  serene  statement  of 


Introduction  xv 

the  secrets  of  human  hearts,  should  be  greeted  as 
the  natural  leader  of  the  movement  on  its  most 
womanly  side.  Love,  as  Ellen  Key  regards  it, 
is  at  the  core  of  the  woman  question,  and  these 
opening  volumes  of  Lifslinger  are,  above  all,  a 
contribution  to  the  woman  question,  a  modern 
and  more  mature  version  of  that  Vindication  of 
the  Rights  of  Woman  which  Mary  Wollstonecraft 
had  set  forth  a  century  earlier. 

In  England,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of 
America,  we  are  yet  but  at  the  beginning  of  this 
new  phase  of  the  woman  movement.  We  have 
been  mainly  concerned  with  the  rights  of  women 
to  be  like  men;  we  are  only  now  beginning  to 
understand  the  rights  of  women  to  be  unlike  men, 
rights  which,  as  Ellen  Key  understands  them, 
include,  although  they  go  beyond,  the  rights 
embodied  in  the  earlier  claims.  The  dogmatic 
fanatics  of  every  party,  it  is  true,  cannot  endure 
Ellen  Key;  they  cannot  understand  her,  though 
she  understands  them,  and  even  regards  them 
with  a  certain  sympathetic  tolerance,  as  we 
should  expect  from  a  disciple  of  Montaigne  and 
Shakespeare  and  Goethe.  She  is  many-sided  and 
is  quite  able  to  see  and  to  accept  both  halves  of 
a  truth.  In  one  of  her  earliest  essays  she  showed 
how  individualism  and  socialism,  which  some 
people  suppose  to  be  incompatible,  are  really 
woven  together,  and  in  the  same  way  she  now 
shows  that  eugenics  and  love — the  social  claims 
of  the  race  and  the  individual  claims  of  the  heart 


xvi  Introduction 

— are  not  opposed  but  identical.  Similarly,  she 
declares  that  to  build  up,  to  help,  to  console  is 
the  greatest  of  women's  rights;  but,  she  adds,  they 
cannot  adequately  exercise  that  right  unless  they 
also  possess  the  right  of  citizenship — so  discon- 
certing the  narrow  partisan  on  each  side.  In 
matters  of  detail  we  may  at  many  points  reserve 
our  opinion.  Ellen  Key  is,  above  all, — like  Olive 
Schreiner,  to  whom  she  is,  in  some  respects,  akin 
— the  prophet  of  a  movement  which  transcends 
merely  isolated  measures  of  reform.  Her  writings 
are  the  candid  expression  of  her  intimate  self.  In 
this  book,  especially,  we  feel  that  we  are  in  the 
inspiring  presence  of  a  woman  whose  personality 
is  one  of  the  chief  moral  forces  of  our  time. 


London,  September,  1910. 


Love  and  Marriage 


Love  and  Marriage 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  COURSE  OF  DEVELOPMENT  OF  SEXUAL 
MORALITY 

All  thoughtful  persons  perceive  that  the  ideas 
of  the  morahty  of  sexual  relations  upheld  by  the 
religions  and  laws  of  the  Western  nations  are  in 
our  time  undergoing  a  radical  transformation. 

Like  all  other  such  changes,  this  one  is  opposed 
by  the  distrust  of  the  guardians  of  society,  a 
distrust  which  is  based  upon  the  view  that  human 
beings  lack  the  power  of  themselves  directing  their 
development  on  an  upward  course.  According 
to  these  critics,  this  direction  is  the  concern  of 
transcendental  reason,  which  expresses  itself  in 
the  real  and  thus  causes  the  real  to  become 
rational.  Marriage  as  it  exists  is  a  historically 
produced  reality,  and  therefore  also  rational.  His- 
torical continuity — as  well  as  religious  and  ethical 
needs — must  entail  the  permanence  of  the  actual 


2  Love  and  Marriage 

institution  of  marriage  as  an  indispensable  condi- 
tion of  the  existence  of  society. 

The  reformers  leave  transcendental  reason  on 
one  side.  But  they  too  acknowledge  the  con- 
nection between  the  real  and  the  rational  to 
this  extent,  that  what  has  been  real,  has  also  been 
rational — so  long  as  in  certain  given  sociological 
and  psychological  conditions  it  has  answered  best 
the  needs  of  humanity  in  some  particular  direc- 
tion. They  acknowledge  the  necessity  of  fixed 
laws  and  customs,  since  these  alone  intensify  the 
feelings  into  sources  of  impulse,  strong  enough 
to  be  translated  into  action.  They  perceive  that 
the  conservative,  tenacious  emotions  have  the 
same  importance  for  the  soul  as  the  skeleton 
for  the  body. 

But  the  historical  necessity,  on  the  other  hand, 
according  to  which  it  is  alleged  that  mankind 
awaits  and  surrenders  itself  to  a  fate  over  which  it 
has  no  control,  is  to  these  reformers  an  absurdity. 
The  ''historical  necessity"  in  every  age  is  the 
realised  will  of  the  strongest  men,  either  in  num- 
ber or  character,  realised  in  the  degree  in  which 
nature  and  history  favour  their  exercise  of  power. 
The  reformers  know  that  the  Western  institution 
of  marriage  has  arisen  partly  from  the  permanent, 
physico-psychological  causes  of  the  maintenance 
of  the  race,  partly  from  historical  causes  which 
were  transitory,  although  their  effects  in  this 
domain,  as  in  many  others,  still  continue.  They 
know  that  of  all  the  fabrics  of  society  marriage 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality      3 

is  the  most  complicated,  the  most  delicate,  and 
the  most  significant;  they  understand,  therefore, 
that  the  majority  must  be  seized  with  terror  when 
the  shrine  of  so  many  generations  is  threatened. 

But  they  know  also  that  all  life  is  subject  to 
transformation ;  that  each  transformation  involves 
the  death  of  once  active  realities,  and  the  forma- 
tion of  new  ones.  They  know  that  this  dying-off 
and  replacing  never  takes  place  uniformly;  that 
laws  and  customs,  which  have  become  a  drag 
upon  the  lives  of  those  in  a  better  position,  are 
still  of  advantage  to  the  majority,  and  there- 
fore ought  to  continue  in  existence  as  long  as 
they  remain  so.  But  they  know  at  the  same  time 
that  it  is  through  the  few  in  a  better  position — 
those  whose  needs  and  powers  are  most  ennobled 
— that  a  higher  standard  of  existence  will  finally 
become  the  portion  also  of  the  majority.  The 
condition  of  all  development  is,  not  to  be  content 
with  the  present,  but  to  have  the  courage  to  ask 
how  everything  can  be  made  better  and  the  good 
fortune  to  find  a  right  answer  to  this  question 
in  thought  or  in  action. 

It  is  thus  the  dissatisfaction  of  the  most  cultured 
class  with  the  existing  contradictions  between  its 
sexual  needs  and  the  form  of  their  legitimate 
gratification  which  is  now  giving  rise  to  attacks 
on  that  institution  of  marriage  which  was  still 
sufficient  for  their  own  grandparents,  just  as  it 
is  even  now  for  a  countless  number  of  their  con- 
temporaries.    These    people  know  well    enough 


4  Love  and  Marriage 

that  their  dissatisfaction  will  not  destroy  marriage, 
so  long  as  the  psychological  and  social  conditions 
which  now  maintain  it  continue  to  exist.  But 
they  know  at  the  same  time  that  their  will  is 
destined  gradually  to  transform  these  psychologi- 
cal and  social  conditions.  And  they  already  see 
on  the  hemisphere  of  the  soul  signs  and  wonders 
which  portend  that  the  fulness  of  time  is  at  hand  c 

The  reformers  do  not  believe  that  the  incon- 
sistencies and  contradictions  which  are  indissolu- 
bly  connected  with  the  natural  conditions  of  the 
maintenance  of  the  race  can  be  got  rid  of  by  any 
legislation.  And  since  they  understand  that 
complete  freedom  is  an  idea  which  only  corre- 
sponds with  perfected  development,  they  are  also 
aware  that  new  forms  frequently  entail  hitherto 
unknown  limitations,  as  well  as  extensions,  of 
liberty. 

What  they  desire  is  such  forms  as,  whether  they 
limit  or  extend  liberty  of  action,  will  promote  a 
life-enhancing  use  of  the  sexual  powers  both  for 
the  individual  and  for  the  race.  They  have  no 
hope  that  the  new  form  will  arrive  in  a  state  of 
perfection,  any  more  than  they  expect  that  all 
mankind  will  be  prepared  for  it.  But  they  hope 
to  foster  the  higher  needs,  to  awaken  the  richer 
powers,  which  are  destined  finally  to  render  the 
new  form  necessary  also  to  the  majority.  This 
hope  kindles  their  calculated  efforts,  which  are 
directed  by  the  certainty  that  personal  love  is 
life's  highest  value,  as  well  directly  for  the  in- 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality      5 

dividual  himself  as  indirectly  for  the  new  lives 
his  love  creates.  And  this  certainty  is  spreading 
from  day  to  day  all  over  the  world. 

Unless  one  believes  in  a  superhuman  reason 
which  directs  evolution,  one  is  bound  to  believe 
in  a  reason  inherent  in  humanity,  a  motive  power 
transcending  that  of  each  separate  people,  just  as 
the  power  of  the  organism  transcends  that  of  the 
organ.  This  reason  increases  in  proportion  as  the 
unity  of  mankind  becomes  established.  Less  and 
less  are  the  individual  nations  able  to  preserve 
their  own  peculiarities  from  the  influence  of  their 
neighbours.  And  this  is  now  becoming  especially 
plain  with  regard  to  sexual  questions.  While 
Scandinavian  and  Anglo-Saxon  ideas  on  sexual 
morality  appear  here  and  there  in  the  literature 
of  the  Latin  races,  the  Latin  view  of  love  has 
helped  to  shape  the  ideas  which  in  Scandinavia  go 
by  the  name  of  "the  new  immorality." 

Thus  from  one  country  to  another  fiy  the  shut- 
tles of  gold  and  shuttles  of  steel,  drawing  the  fine 
and  many-coloured  woof  of  contemporary  con- 
sciousness through  thread  after  thread  of  the 
strong  warp,  made  up  of  the  laws  and  customs  of 
various  nations.  What  follows  is  in  part  a  draw- 
ing of  the  new  pattern  this  weaving  is  fashioning, 
in  part  an  insertion  into  this  pattern  of  certain 
new  motives. 


Those  who  regard  monogamy  as  the  only  stand- 


6  Love  and  Marriage 

ard  of  sexual  morality  and  the  only  legitimate 
form  of  personal  love,  do  not  mean  the  ostensible 
monogamy  now  established  by  law  but  circum- 
vented by  custom.  They  mean  real  monogamy : 
one  man  for  one  woman  during  that  man's  life- 
time ;  one  woman  for  one  man  during  that  woman's 
lifetime,  and  beyond  that  complete  abstinence. 
In  the  way  of  development,  they  acknowledge 
only  one  gradual  realisation  of  this  ideal;  in  the 
tendency  of  the  present  day  to  adopt  several  lines 
of  development  they  see  nothing  but  decadence. 
Again,  those  who  profess  the  faith  of  Life  re- 
gard the  ideals  of  mankind  as  an  expression  of 
man's  higher  needs.  Ideals  which  were  once 
incentives  to  development  thus  become  a  drag 
upon  it,  whenever  life's  needs  demand  new  forms 
that  are  not  recognised  by  the  prevailing  idealism. 
Only  he  who  believes  in  supersensuous,  God- 
inspired  ideals  will  consider  these  fixed  for  all  na- 
tures and  all  times.  Evolution,  on  the  other  hand, 
shows  us  that  the  same  ideals  never  have  been  and 
never  can  be  accepted  by  all  the  beings  we  include 
in  the  single  expression,  the  human  race,  but  which 
in  reality  belong  to  almost  as  many  separate 
races  as  the  animal  world.  Evolutionists  indeed 
rejoice  that  humanity  cannot  be  equated  under  a 
single  faith,  a  single  code  of  custom,  a  single  ideal, 
since  in  the  diversity  of  life  they  see  a  great  part 
of  its  worth.  They  think  that  this  in  itself  is  a 
sufficient  reason  for  gradually  granting  to  individ- 
uals of  the  same  time  and  country  that  liberty 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality      7 

which,  from  a  historical  point  of  view,  is  allowed 
to  the  same  nation  at  different  periods,  and,  from 
an  ethnographical  point  of  view,  to  different  na- 
tions at  the  same  period :  namely,  the  liberty,  with- 
in certain  limits,  of  choosing  its  own  form  of  sexual 
life.  And  they  would  be  the  more  ready  to  do  so, 
since  the  geographical,  climatic,  historical,  and 
economic  differences  between  individuals  are  just 
as  great  as  those  between  nations  and  periods,  and 
thus  what  is  adequate  to  the  needs  and  develop- 
ment of  one  cannot  answer  to  those  of  the 
rest. 

Few  propositions  are  so  lacking  in  proof  as  that 
monogamy  is  the  form  of  sexual  life  which  is 
indispensable  to  the  vitality  and  culture  of  na- 
tions. Neither  history  nor  ethnography  need  be 
appealed  to  against  an  assertion  which  is  suffi- 
ciently refuted  by  the  fact  that  monogamy,  ac- 
cording to  our  strict  definition  above,  has  never  yet 
been  a  reality  even  among  the  Christian  nations, 
except  for  a  minority  of  individuals;  that  all  the 
progress  that  is  ascribed  to  Christian  civilisation 
has  taken  place  while  monogamy  was  indeed  the 
law  but  polygamy  the  custom.  During  the  period 
which  is  rhetorically  alluded  to  as  that  of  '  Virtue 
and  manliness,"  the  days  of  heathenism  in  the 
North,  those  laws  and  customs  prevailed  which 
now — after  a  thousand  years'  further  refinement 
of  the  emotional  life  under  Christianity — are 
regarded  as  involving  the  dissolution  of  society ! 
Our  excellent  forefathers,  whose  morals  seem  so 


8  Love  and  Marriage 

greatly  to  have  outshone  our  own,  were  all  born  in 
civil  matrimony  and  brought  up  in  homes  where 
not  infrequently  the  concubine  lived  by  the  same 
hearth  as  the  wife,  and  where  the  latter  was 
liable  to  be  repudiated  for  reasons  as  trivial  as 
those  for  which  she  might  herself  obtain  divorce. 
Indeed,  these  ancestors  were  sometimes  the  off- 
spring of  a  ''free  love"  which  found  a  home  in  the 
wilderness  when  the  guardian  had  forbidden  the 
lawful  union  of  a  loving  couple.  The  introduction 
by  the  Catholic  Church  of  an  indissoluble  mar- 
riage tie  did  not  prevent  the  people  from  narrowly 
escaping  ruin  in  the  Middle  Ages.  No  one, 
again,  will  give  to  eighteenth-century  France  the 
credit  for  monogamous  morality.  Nevertheless, 
France  retained  vitality  enough  to  determine  the 
history  of  Europe  by  her  economical,  intellectual, 
and  military  power.  And,  in  spite  of  its  erotic 
"immorality,"  the  heart  of  the  French  nation 
still  possesses  a  great  reserve  of  health  and 
tenacity,  together  with  excellent  civic  virtues 
and  powers  of  work. 

Those  who  are  so  fond  of  asserting  that  mono- 
gamy and  indissoluble  marriage  determine  the 
existence  of  nations,  are  either  ignorant  of  the 
past  history  and  present  condition  of  the  nations, 
or  conceal  their  knowledge  behind  the  prejudiced 
view  that  the  white  humanity  of  Europe  is  to  be 
taken  as  the  criterion  for  the  morality  as  well  as 
for  the  faith  of  the  whole  race. 

On  the  other  hand,  what  can  be  proved  is  this: 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality      9 

that  the  vitahty  of  a  people  depends  first  and  fore- 
most on  the  capacity  and  wilHngness  of  its  women 
to  bear  and  foster  children  fit  to  live,  and  on  their 
husbands'  capacity  and  willingness  to  protect  the 
national  existence.  In  the  next  place,  it  depends 
on  the  whole  people's  fondness  for  work  and 
ability  in  the  achievement  of  prosperity  for  itself 
and  of  value  for  mankind  at  large,  and  finally  on 
the  will  of  the  individual  to  sacrifice  his  own  ends 
when  the  common  weal  demands  it.  What  can 
further  be  proved  is  that,  if  a  people  wastes  its 
strength  in  sexual  dissipation,  this  will  often 
prevent  its  fulfilling  the  conditions  we  have 
mentioned  as  necessary  to  its  progress,  and  will 
thus  bring  about  its  ruin. 

But  this  does  not  involve  any  proof  that  a  nation 
will  be  ruined  if  it  alters  the  forms  of  sexual  life 
according  to  a  newly-acquired  knowledge  of  the 
most  reasonable  sexual  morality ! 

Monogamy  was  victorious  from  many  causes, 
above  all  from  experience  of  its  advantages.  It 
minimised  the  struggle  of  the  men  for  the  women 
and  thus  economised  forces  for  other  ends;  it 
provided  an  incentive  to  work  for  offspring;  it 
developed  modesty  and  tenderness  within  the 
sexual  relationship  and  thus  raised  the  position 
of  the  woman  and  with  it  her  importance  in  the 
bringing-up  of  the  children ;  it  provided  them  and 
her  with  a  protection  against  the  arbitrary  will 
of  the  husband ;  through  home  life  it  fostered  self- 
command  and  co-operation;  the  need  of  the  two 


10  Love  and  Marriage 

for  each  other  led  to  mutual  kindness.  The 
authority  of  the  husband  was  ennobled  by  the 
sense  of  responsibility  and  the  joy  of  protection; 
the  dependence  of  the  wife  by  devotion  and 
fidelity.  This  last  was  strengthened  by  fear  of 
the  husband's  proprietary  jealousy,  by  his  craving 
for  the  certainty  that  his  property  would  be  in- 
herited by  his  own  children ;  by  religions,  accord- 
ing to  which  the  admixture  of  foreign  blood  in 
the  race  was  a  sin ;  by  the  hope  of  Christianity  for 
a  life  together  beyond  the  grave;  and  by  their 
common  children,  the  feeling  of  tenderness  for 
whom  grew  deeper  as  development  proceeded. 
And  monogamy  still  continues  to  exercise  this 
cultivating  influence  on  the  morals  and  on  the 
soul.  It  might,  therefore,  seem  that  this  ad- 
mission of  the  value  of  even  an  imperfect  mono- 
gamy rendered  all  further  proof  unnecessary  for 
those  who  assert  that  the  true  development  of 
sexual  morality  can  only  be  secured  through  a 
gradually  perfected  monogamy.  But  they  forget 
that  monogamy,  which  v/as  a  custom  long  before 
the  introduction  of  Christianity,  became  injurious 
as  well  as  beneficial  to  true  sexual  morality,  from 
the  moment  the  Church  prescribed  it  as  the  only  form 
of  this  morality. 

Then,  by  a  common  trick  of  thought,  the  con- 
clusion was  drawn  that  the  mighty  development 
of  culture  which  had  taken  place  under  monogamy 
would  have  been  impossible  if  this  had  not  been 
the  sole  legitimate  form  of  sexual  relationship. 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality     ii 

And  thus  it  was  established  as  the  indispensable 
condition  of  all  higher  culture! 

The  import  of  the  moral  controversies  which 
now  arise  with  increasing  frequency  is  the  exami- 
nation of  the  relatively  higher  value  for  real  sexual 
morality  of  marriage  or  love. 

So  long  as  man  believed  that  he  had  been 
created  perfect,  had  then  fallen  and  continued  in 
everlasting  strife  between  the  spirit  and  the  flesh, 
no  doubt  could  arise  of  the  absolute  value  of  the 
Christian  ideal  of  morality.  Even  those  who 
strove  hardest  to  attain  this  ideal,  even  those 
vanquished  in  the  strife,  confessed  themselves  sin- 
ners in  so  far  as  the  flesh  triumphed  over  the  spirit. 
It  was  evolutionism  that  first  gave  man  courage 
to  wonder  whether  he  may  not  also  be  "sinning" 
when  the  spirit  triumphs  over  the  flesh;  to  ask 
himself  whether  perchance  marriage  did  not  exist 
for  mankind,  and  not  mankind  for  marriage;  to  as- 
sert the  right  of  the  present  time  to  more  universal 
experience  with  regard  to  the  sexual  customs  most 
favourable  to  the  development  of  the  race.  For 
"the  idea  of  marriage"  is  to  them  nothing  else 
than  to  further  this  development.  But  universal 
experience  cannot  be  won  so  long  as  religion  and 
law  prescribe  a  single  custom  as  certainly  the  right 
custom  and  all  others  are  thus  condemmed  and 
obstructed — as  soon  as  they  show  themselves 
with  serious  frankness — while  secret  trespass 
against  the  monogamous  ideal  is  countenanced. 
It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  sanctioning  of  this 


12  Love  and  Marriage 

ideal  has  incited  many  to  try  to  realise  it;  in- 
deed, hypocrisy  itself  is  an  indirect  tribute  to  its 
worth.  But  its  fixity  has  now  become  a  danger  to 
continued  evolution. 


On  the  question  of  marriage,  as  in  all  other 
respects,  Lutheranism  is  a  compromise,  a  bridge 
between  two  logical  views  of  the  universe:  the 
Catholic-Christian  and  the  Individualistic  Monist. 
And  bridges  are  made  to  go  over,  not  to  stand 
upon. 

None  of  our  ''immoral"  authors  has  insisted 
more  strongly  than  Luther  and  Olaus  Petri  on  the 
power  of  the  sexual  life.  Both  regard  modesty 
without  marriage  as  unthinkable.  Both  see  in 
marriage  the  means  given  by  God  to  satisfy 
desire,  just  as  food  is  the  means  given  by  God  to 
satisfy  hunger.  But  man  has  as  little  right  to 
satisfy  the  former  by  unchastity  as  he  has  to  still 
the  latter  by  theft.  There  would  be  nothing  to 
object  to  in  this  if  unchastity  had  not  been  made 
synonymous  with  every  form  of  sexual  relation 
outside  matrimony,  while  chastity  became  equiv- 
alent to  every  form  of  marriage. 

Luther  showed  some  knowledge  of  nature  when 
he  taught  that,  though  it  may  be  possible  for 
human  beings  to  repress  their  actions  outside  wed- 
lock, they  cannot  repress  their  feelings  and 
desires.     On  the  other  hand  he  knew  nothing  of 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality     13 

that  creation  of  culture,  love,  and  therefore  he 
failed  to  see  that  exactly  the  same  sentence  which 
he  used  to  confute  celibacy  may  also  be  employed 
to  confute  marriage,  for  the  vow  of  fidelity  no 
more  entails  real  faithfulness  than  the  vow  of 
chastity  is  the  cause  of  true  purity.  Real  fidelity 
can  only  arise  when  love  and  marriage  become 
equivalent  terms.  The  substance  of  Luther's 
controversy  on  marriage  was  not  a  higher  con- 
ception of  matrimony  than  that  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  it  was  merely  the  restoration  of  marriage 
to  churchmen  and  monastic  communities.  We 
have  to  thank  Luther  for  the  Lutheran  parsonage 
and  with  it  for  a  great  contribution  to  the  poetry 
of  country  life,  to  popular  culture,  to  the  produc- 
tion of  many  "great  minds,  and — indirectly — to  the 
moulding  of  many  passionate  freethinkers.  The 
Lutheran  doctrine  of  marriage,  on  the  other  hand, 
deserves  no  thanks,  since — like  Protestantism  as 
a  whole — it  stopped  short  in  an  insoluble  contra- 
diction. Instead  of  upholding,  in  the  spirit  of  the 
Catholic  Church  and  of  Christ,  the  indissolu- 
bility of  marriage  and  demanding  the  suppression 
of  sensuality  when  the  peace  of  the  soul  required 
it,  Luther,  by  his  insistence  on  the  strength  of 
natural  inclinations,  was  forced  into  concessions, 
which — quite  in  accordance  with  the  teachings  of 
the  Bible — went  so  far  as  to  approve  of  bigamy. 
To  the  gross  apprehension  of  the  Reformation 
period  the  choice  of  a  personal  love  meant  nothing. 
With  marriage  possible  from  a  natural  point  of 


14  Love  and  Marriage 

view  alone,  it  might  be  contracted  with  anyone; 
indeed,  to  the  genuinely  pious  it  seemed  a  higher 
thing  to  enter  into  matrimony  without  any  earthly 
love,  which  interfered  with  the  love  of  God.  The 
Lutheran  doctrine  of  marriage  made  God  "in- 
dulgent" towards  all  the  impurity  that  the  sexual 
life  shut  up  within  the  whited  sepulchre  of  lawful 
wedlock.  He  has  shut  his  eyes  to  all  the  wife- 
murders  that  the  command  of  fecundity  involved ; 
to  all  the  worthless  children  produced  by  ill- 
matched  and  impure  marriages.  He  has  ' '  blessed 
all  unions  entered  into,  even  though  from  the 
lowest  motives,  under  the  most  unnatural  circum- 
stances :  between  a  sick  person  and  a  healthy  one, 
an  old  and  a  young,  a  willing  and  an  unwilling  or 
two  unwilling  ones,  coupled  together  by  their 
families.  To-day,  countless  women  are  still  being 
sacrificed  to  this  doctrine  of  marriage,  or  to  its 
unconscious  effects ;  their  exhausted  wombs  are  a 
poor  soil  for  the  new  generation;  their  crushed 
souls  a  broken  support  for  the  growth  of  new  wills. 
For  one  woman  who  defends  herself  with  the 
resolution  lent  by  horror,  there  are  thousands  who 
have  conceived  and  still  conceive  children  in 
loathing.  For  one  wife  who  is  metj__with  the 
modest  prayer  of  love,  there  are  thousands  who 
with  a  feeling  of  humiliation  concede  to  their 
proprietors  the  right  inculcated  by  the  Lutheran 
doctrine  of  matrimony.  But  the  signs  of  the 
times  are  visible  even  within  the  Lutheran  Church. 
There  are  to  be  found  younger  men  who  maintain 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality     15 

that  love — not  merely  the  formula  about  love  in 
the  marriage-service — must  be  present  if  the 
marriage  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  moral  one.  And 
probably  these  neo-Lutheran  prophets  of  love  use 
their  influence  to  prevent  a  number  of  repulsive 
marriages.  But  it  does  not  occur  either  to  them 
or  to  their  congregation  to  treat  with  contempt 
a  couple  who  have  been  married  for  the  most 
despicable  reasons.  On  the  other  hand,  if  two 
young  and  healthy  people,  united  only  by  their 
love,  should  live  together  and  fulfil  the  command 
of  fruitfulness,  then  indeed  this  couple  would  be 
made  to  feel,  through  shameful  treatment — if  not 
by  the  young  clergyman  himself,  then  by  his  flock 
— that  a  sexual  connection  sanctioned  by  law  is 
the  only  one  that  is  respected,  and  that,  therefore, 
it  is  not  the  seriousness  of  personal  love  in  itself, 
but  primarily  society's  oflicial  stamp  that  makes 
it  pass  as  a  moral  ground  for  the  cohabitation  of 
two  human  beings.  And  if  a  person  who  is  un- 
happy in  a  loveless  marriage  frees  himself  and 
establishes  a  new  home  on  "personal  love,  the 
moral  ground  of  marriage,"  then  the  churchmen 
hasten  to  substitute  for  ''the  moral  ground  of 
marriage"  that  of  duty. 

The  doctrine  that  love  is  the  moral  ground  of 
sexual  relations  is  thus  as  yet  only  an  unendorsed 
sequence  of  words.  The  attempt  to  realise  it 
was  for  a  long  time  a  punishable  crime  in  Lutheran 
countries,  and  will  probably  be  still  treated  about 
the  year  2000  as  a  culpable  error. 


i6  Love  and  Marriao^e 

Thus  the  marriage  doctrine  of  Lutheranism — 
Hke  that  of  Christianity  in  general — has  ended, 
according  to  the  moral  ideas  of  the  religion  of 
Life,  in  immorality,  since  it  no  more  protects  the 
right  of  the  race  to  the  best  conditions  of  life  than 
it  admits  the  right  of  the  individual  to  realise  his 
love  according  to  the  needs  of  his  personal  moral- 
ity. The  object  of  the  Lutheran  marriage  was  to 
unite  man  and  woman,  with  or  without  love,  as  a 
means  to  securing  their  mutual  morality,  to  make 
them  breeders  of  children  for  society,  and  in 
addition  to  retain  the  husband  as  breadwinner. 
By  relentlessly  pursuing  this  object,  the  church  has 
succeeded  in  damming  up  but  not  in  purifying 
sensuality,  in  developing  the  sense  of  responsi- 
bility but  not  of  love.  It  has  thus  merely  rough- 
planed  the  material  for  a  higher  morality.  This 
rough-planed  material  may  still  be  the  most 
suitable  for  general  use,  but  more  and  more 
people  will  now  require   finer  instruments. 

The  new  conception  of  morality  grows  out  of 
the  hope  of  the  gradual  ascent  of  the  race  towards 
greater  perfection.  Those  forms  of  sexual  life 
which  best  serve  this  progress  must  therefore  be- 
come the  standards  of  the  new  morality.  But  as 
the  nature  of  a  relation  can  only  be  determined  by 
its  results,  those  who  hold  the  faith  of  Life  will  ap- 
ply a  conditional  judgment  also  in  the  case  of  sexual 
affairs.  Only  cohabitation  can  decide  the  moral- 
ity of  a  particular  case — in  other  words,  its  power 
to  enhance  the  life  of  the  individuals  who  are  liv- 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    17 

ing  together  and  that  of  the  race.  Thus  sanction 
can  never  he  granted  in  advance  nor — with  certain 
exceptions  relating  to  children — can  it  he  denied 
to  any  matrimonial  relationship.  Each  fresh 
couple,  whatever  form  they  may  choose  for  their 
cohabitation,  must  themselves  prove  its  moral 
claim. 

This  is  the  new  morality,  which  is  now  called 
immoral  by  the  same  type  of  souls  as  condemned 
Luther  on  his  appearance  as  immoral, — a  judg- 
ment which  is  repeated  in  the  Catholic  world, 
where  to-day  the  same  abuse  is  heaped  upon  "the 
unchaste  monk"  as  is  poured  upon  the  adherents 
of  "free  love"  within  the  Lutheran  communities. 
The  question  for  Luther's  present-day  "liberal" 
followers,  both  in  this  matterand  in  that  of  faith, 
is  whether  they  shall  turn  back  or  go  forward; 
back  to  the  firm  ground  of  absolute  authority,  or 
over  the  bridge  of  free  experiment  into  the  un- 
trodden country  of  an  entirely  personal  faith; 
back  to  indissoluble  marriage  or  over  the  bridge 
of  coercion  to  the  rights  of  love.  The  right 
course  of  a  consistent  thought  admits  of  no  third 
possibility. 

The  neo-Protestant  doctrine  of  marriage  is 
already  much  less  logical  than  Luther's.  They 
agree  with  him  in  admitting  the  right  of  the 
sensual  side  of  love,  and  with  their  contemporaries 
in  granting  to  love  its  share  in  human  life.  But 
when  they  proceed  to  draw  limits  for  both,  they 
bring  themselves  into  an  untenable  position. 


1 8  Love  and  Marriage 

They  bring  themselves  into  an  untenable 
position  not  because  they  insist  upon  self-control 
within  as  well  as  outside  of  matrimony  (all  prepa- 
ration for  a  final  enhancement  of  life  involves 
temporary  checks  upon  life)  but  because  the  self- 
control  they  demand  is  so  comprehensive  that  it 
will  be  in  a  high  degree  obstructive  to  life  with- 
out the  compensation  of  a  final  enhancement,  for 
they  limit  the  sexual  part  of  love  to  the  task  of 
continuing  the  species,  and  the  part  of  love  in  hu- 
man life  to  a  single  relationship.  Those  couples 
who  are  unable  or  unwilling  to  take  upon  them- 
selves the  responsibility  for  a  new  life  are  thus 
condemned  to  celibacy  in  marriage.  Those  couples 
who  have  once  founded  their  marriage  on  love 
must  maintain  the  relationship  even  without  love. 

These  demands  are  more  ruthless  to  human 
nature  than  those  opposed  by  Luther.  Com- 
plete celibacy  is  easier  than  married  celibacy. 
The  needs  of  the  soul  are  stronger  than  those 
of  the  senses.  This  ought  not,  however,  to  pre- 
vent the  setting  up  of  the  strict  demands  if  these 
were  really  conducive  to  a  higher  existence  from 
the  sexual  point  of  view.  But  only  one  who  dis- 
regards life's  reality  (and  the  Christian  is  often 
such  a  one)  can  at  the  same  time  set  up  personal 
love  as  the  ground  of  sexual  morality  and  limit  its 
rights  within  certain  bounds  of  morality. 

Personal  love,  as  now  developed  by  civilisa- 
tion, has  become  so  complicated,  comprehensive, 
and  involved  that  not  only  does  it  constitute  in 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality     19 

itself  (independently  of  its  mission  to  the  race) 
a  great  asset  in  life,  hut  it  also  raises  or  lowers  the 
value  of  all  else.  It  has  acquired  a  new  significance 
besides  its  original  one :  that  of  bearing  the  flame 
of  life  from  generation  to  generation.  No  one 
calls  him  immoral  who — disappointed  in  his  love — 
abstains  from  continuing  the  race  in  his  marriage ; 
nor  would  the  couple  be  called  immoral  who  con- 
tinue in  a  marriage  made  happy  by  love,  although 
it  has  shown  itself  to  be  childless.  But  in  both 
these  cases,  the  parties  concerned  follow  their 
subjective  feelings  at  the  cost  of  the  race  and  treat 
their  love  as  an  end  in  itself.  The  right  already 
granted  to  the  individuals  in  these  cases  at  the 
cost  of  the  race  will  in  future  be  extended  more  and 
more  in  proportion  as  the  significance  of  love 
grows.  On  the  other  hand,  the  new  morality  will 
demand  of  love  an  ever  greater  voluntary  limitation 
of  its  rights,  during  the  times  that  a  new  life  claims 
it,  as  well  as  voluntary  or  compulsory  renunciation 
of  the  right  to  produce  new  lives,  under  conditions 
which  would  render  them  of  less  value. 

The  marriage  doctrine  of  neo-Protestantism, 
like  that  of  Tolstoy,  rests  finally  on  the  ascetic 
distrust  of  the  sexual  life.  Neither  doctrine  sup- 
poses that  the  sensual  side  can  be  ennobled  other- 
wise than  by  being  placed  exclusively  at  the 
service  of  the  race.  It  is  this  point  of  view  which 
is  finally  decisive  in  all  Christian  conceptions  of 
morality.  Christianity  is  sustained  by  the  know- 
ledge that  the  object  of  man's  life  on  earth  is  his 


20  Love  and  Marriage 

development  as  an  eternal  being.  Therefore  none 
of  his  expressions  of  life  can  be  an  end  in  itself,  but 
must  serve  a  higher  purpose  than  the  earthly  life 
and  happiness  of  the  individual — or  even  than  that 
of  the  race. 

When  the  foundation  of  sexual  morality  was 
laid  in  an  existence  beyond  this  world,  it  lost 
its  connection  with  the  continuation  of  the  race 
and  thus  was  brought  into  contradiction  with 
itself.  This  is  the  reason  why  Christianity,  while 
it  has  indirectly  done  much  for  the  spiritualisation 
of  love,  has  yet  never  succeeded  in  combining  the 
needs  of  the  individual  with  those  of  the  race,  the 
cravings  of  the  soul  with  those  of  the  senses. 
That  moral  standard  will  alone  be  all-embracing 
which  is  determined  by  the  belief  that  the  meaning 
of  life  is  its  development  through  individuals  to- 
wards higher  and  higher  forms  of  life  for  the  whole 
race.  This  standard  will  not  regard  any  ascetic- 
ism as  moral  which  contemplates  the  freeing  of 
the  soul  from  the  bonds  of  sensuality,  as  is  the 
great  aspiration  of  Eastern  asceticism.  It  only 
recognises  the  claim  of  such  self-discipline  as  brings 
about  an  ever-increasing  unity  between  the  soul 
and  the  will  of  the  body.  Such  a  self-discipline, 
indeed,  renounces  the  nearer  and  lesser  good  for 
the  more  distant  and  greater.  But  it  finds  this 
good,  in  the  domain  of  love  as  in  everything  else, 
in  an  increasingly  soulful  sensuousness,  or  in  an 
increasingly  sensuous  soulfulness,  not  in  the 
spirituality  of    asceticism,  more  and  more  freed 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality     21 

from  the  senses.  To  the  chapel  of  this  spirituaHty 
a  mountain  path  leads,  which — however  arduous 
every  step  may  be — yet  goes  straight  to  the  goal. 
The  soulful-sensual  existence  again  is  a  cell  to 
which  a  labyrinth  leads.  Here  each  step  is  less 
difficult,  but  the  whole  journey  involves  infinitely 
greater  dangers  and  excitement.  It  may  be  for 
this  reason  that  as  yet  it  only  attracts  the  strongest 
— those  who  never  renounce  pleasure,  since  they 
find  pleasure  even  in  renunciation.  For  him  who 
seeks  the  latter  goal  a  single  standard  of  morality 
will  appear  inapplicable — simply  because  human 
nature  is  manifold.  Sexual  abstinence  in  youth, 
for  instance,  may  strengthen  nine  out  of  ten  young 
men.  The  tenth  it  may  change  into  a  man  of 
bestial  impulses,  who,  although  before  marriage 
he  has  been  chaste,  may  show,  when  married,  a 
coarseness  or  depravity  which  drags  down  the 
wife  to  his  level  or  opens  an  abyss  between  them. 
Purely  sensual  unions  may  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten 
deteriorate  both  the  man  and  the  woman.  In  the 
tenth  case  such  a  connection  may  deepen  into  a 
feeling  that  determines  the  course  of  two  lives,  and 
the  resulting  marriage  offers  better  prospects  of 
happiness  than  that  of  many  a  young  couple  who 
have  entered  upon  married  life  according  to  the 
rule  which  is  regarded  as  the  only  one  to  give 
security  of  happiness.  Thus  it  is  possible  in  one 
case  out  of  ten  that  the  love  for  which  a  young 
man  has  kept  himself  pure  until  marriage  really 
is  personal  love.     In  the  other  nine  cases  it  is  not 


22  Love  and  Marriage 

so,  but  on  the  contrary  the  most  impersonal  of  all 
love.  Thus  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  it  is  possible 
that  such  disappointments  can  be  borne  through  a 
sense  of  duty,  so  that  personality  grows  beneath 
them.  In  the  tenth,  again,  persistence  in  the  mis- 
take will  be  the  ruin  of  personality. 

Those  who  make — and  rightly — complete  purity 
before  marriage  and  personal  love  in  the  married 
state  the  standard  of  morality,  ought,  on  account 
of  innumerable  similar  experiences,  to  make  up 
their  minds  to  let  every  one  decide  for  himself 
how  this  purity  can  best  be  attained,  before  as 
well  as  after  marriage,  and  what  personal  love 
shall  be  held  to  imply.  Either  it  must  mean  noth- 
ing for  or  against  the  sanctity  of  marriage;  or,  if  it 
is  to  mean  sanctity  at  the  outset  of  married  life, 
then  it  must  also  mean  the  same  during  its  con- 
tinuance. But  only  the  individual  himself  knows 
how  long  his  marriage  remains  sanctified  by  per- 
sonal love  or  when  it  ceased  to  be  so.  No  one  can 
be  burdened  with  the  duty  of  remaining  in  an  un- 
hallowed relation,  and  neo-Protestantism  must 
therefore  either  declare  personal  love  to  be  the 
moral  ground  of  marriage  or  unconditional  fidelity 
to  be  the  expression  of  moral  personality. 

The  monist  in  these  questions  does  not  ask 
whether  a  sexual  relationship  is  the  first  and 
only  one,  before  he  acknowledges  its  morality. 
He  only  v/ishes  to  know  whether  it  was  such 
that  it  did  not  exclude  the  personalities  of 
the  lovers;  whether  it  was  a   union  in   which 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    23 

'^neither  the  soul  betrayed  the  senses  nor  the  senses 
the  soul.'" 

In  these  words  George  Sand  gave  the  idea  of 
the  new  chastity. 


The  claims  of  the  new  sexual  morahty  show 
curious  similarities  and  dissimilarities  to  those  to 
which  the  age  of  chivalry  gave  rise  in  the  same 
sphere.  Thus  the  Courts  of  Love  held  the  principle 
that  marriage  and  love  are  mutually  exclusive. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  conception  of  personality 
has  given  rise  to  a  desire  for  unity  which  makes  it 
repulsive  to  many  people  to  live  in  matrimony 
unless  there  is  a  longing  of  the  soul  and  of  the 
senses  for  one's  partner  in  marriage.  The  age 
of  chivalry  in  its  idea  of  love  ignored  the  new 
generation  whereas  the  hope  of  the  present  day 
is  through  love  to  perfect  the  race  just  as  much 
as  the  lovers  themselves. 

Nor  does  the  new  morality  deny  to  the  many, 
who  have  not  even  been  capable  of  dreaming  of 
personal  love,  the  right  to  contract  a  marriage, 
which  will  at  least  contribute  to  their  poor  ex- 
istence the  interest  of  home  and  the  joy  of  parent- 
age. But  it  will  be  severe  with  those  who, 
having  had  experience  or  intuition  of  love,  have 
entered  without  it  into  a  marriage  which  will 
certainly  impoverish  and  perhaps  ruin  more  lives 
than  their  own.    Prudence  may  counsel  leniency 


24  Love  and  Marriage 

of  judgment  in  the  individual  case,  since  the 
majority  of  human  beings  learn  to  know  their 
hearts  late  in  life,  if  at  all.  Once  more,  as  a 
guiding  principle  of  morality,  the  unity  of  marriage 
and  love  must  be  maintained.  By  his  power  of 
creating  ideals,  and  the  ever-increasing  demand  for 
happiness  which  results,  man  has  deepened  his 
instinct  of  spiritual  needs,  and  the  same  power  of 
idealisation  is  now  ruthlessly  withdrawing  the 
outward  supports  of  sexual  morality  and  replacing 
them  by  the  idea  of  unity.  That  the  halt  and  the 
lame  are  thereby  deprived  of  their  crutches  will 
be  no  stumbling-block  to  him  who  looks  beyond 
the  halt  and  the  lame  to  the  finer  and  healthier 
men  of  the  future. 

It  is  true  that  the  idea  of  unity  involves  the  right 
of  every  person  to  shape  his  sexual  life  in  accordance 
with  his  individual  needs,  but  only  on  condition 
that  he  does  not  prejudice  unity  or  the  rights  of 
the  beings  to  whom  his  love  gives  life.  Love  thus 
becomes  more  and  more  a  private  affair  of  the  in- 
dividual, while  childrefi  are  more  and  more  the 
business  of  society,  and  from  this  it  follows  that  the 
two  lowest  expressions  of  sexual  division  (dual- 
ism) sanctioned  by  society,  namely,  coercive  mar- 
riage and  prostitution,  will  by  degrees  become 
impossible,  since  after  the  triumph  of  the  idea  of 
unity  they  will  no  longer  answer  to  the  needs  of 
humanity. 

By  coercive  marriage  is  meant  that  under  which 
not  only  are  the  morality  of  cohabitation  and  the 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    25 

rights  of  the  children  dependent  on  the  form  of 
cohabitation,  but  the  possibihty  of  divorce  for  one 
of  the  parties  is  also  dependent  on  the  other's  will. 
By  prostitution  is  meant  all  trading  with  one's 
sex,  whether  this  traffic  is  carried  on  by  women  or 
by  men,  who  from  necessity  or  inclination  sell 
themselves  with  or  without  marriage.  Both  these 
things  occur  under  grosser  and  under  milder  forms. 
There  is  a  scale  of  degrees  for  loveless  marriage,  as 
there  is  for  loveless — "love."  The  distance  is 
great  between,  for  instance,  ''La  Dame  aux 
Camélias"  or  Raskolnikoff's  *' Sonja"  on  the  one 
hand,  and  a  prowler  of  the  gutter  on  the  other.  So 
it  is  between  a  woman  who  contracts  a  marriage 
from  the  longing  for  motherhood  and  one  who  does 
it  from  love  of  luxury ;  between  a  man  who  seeks 
a  partner  in  his  work  and  one  who  only  wants  a 
wife  to  console  his  creditors.  But  whether  one, 
with  part  of  one's  person,  buys  one's  self  free  from 
hunger  or  from  debts,  loneliness  or  desire;  how- 
ever great  in  itself  the  value  one  gains  may  be, 
still  the  transaction  remains,  for  buyer  as  well  as 
for  seller,  a  humiliation  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  sexual  morality  which  sees  things  as  a 
whole. 

The  development  of  the  consciousness  of  erotic 
personality  is  at  present  hindered  in  an  equal  de- 
gree by  the  ''morality"  settled  by  society,  and 
by  the  "immorality"  regulated  by  society. 
Whether  it  is  a  question  of  maintaining  the  former 
or  of  excusing  the  latter,  we  are  told  that  idealism 


26  Love  and  Marriage 

must  make  way  for  "the  needs  of  real  life."  The 
same  men  who  with  reason  are  afraid  of  the  dis- 
solution of  society  if  the  right  of  the  hungry  to 
steal  were  preached  in  the  name  of  "the  needs  of 
real  life,"  consider  themselves  wise  when,  in  a  far 
more  important  sphere  than  that^of  property,  they 
proclaim  the  necessity  of  stealing,  in  the  form  of 
prostitution. 

Real  life  has  certainly  its  claims :  in  the  one  case, 
that  all  who  are  hungry  for  food  should  have  work, 
at  such  a  rate  of  pay  that  they  can  eat ;  in  the 
other,  that  all  who  are  of  marriageable  age  should 
have  the  possibility  of  contracting  marriage  at  the 
right  time.  But  the  changes  that  must  take  place 
before  this  can  comxC  to  pass  will  fail  to  appear  so 
long  as  society — under  the  assumption  that  prosti- 
tution is  a  necessary  evil — superintends  its  results 
and  thus  gives  itself  the  illusion  that  its  dangers 
can  be  provided  against.  For  thus  society  escapes 
the  search  for  expedients  which  would  better  pro- 
vide for  the  two  fundamental  needs — love  and 
hunger — for  the  satisfaction  of  which  prostitution 
at  present  provides  the  only  means  for  many  men 
and  women. 

But  these  changes  will  also  fail  to  appear  so 
long  as  society — under  the  assumption  that  mar- 
riage is  a  necessary  good — retains  this  as  the 
sole  mark  of  morality  in  sexual  relations. 

For  this  state  of  things,  those  preachers  of 
morality  are  to  blame  who  persuade  themselves 
that  the  only  cure  for  the  evil  is  a  still  stricter 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    27 

maintenance  of  the  claims  of  monogamy.  They 
are  afraid  of  any  mention  of  the  wealth  of  varied 
experience,  of  the  longing  for  happiness,  or  the  joy 
of  life.  They  proclaim  nothing  but  the  sense  of 
duty,  responsibility  for  one's  individual  soul,  and 
obligations  to  society.  But  this  has  been  con- 
stantly preached  from  the  dawn  of  Christianity, 
and  yet  the  standard  of  sexual  morality  as  a  whole 
is  no  higher  than  it  was.  This  gives  food  for 
reflection.  The  more  so  when  this  dread  of  love 
is  carried  as  far  as  Tolstoy's — or  rather,  the  Ori- 
ental world's — detestation  of  the  senses;  when 
marriage  is  regarded  solely  as  a  palliative  for  a 
hereditary  disease,  which  ought  rather  to  be 
stamped  out  so  as  to  render  the  remedy  un- 
necessary. 


When  psychical  phenomena  have  been  as  much 
investigated  as  physical,  love  will  also  receive  its 
cumatology — that  is,  its  science  of  waves.  We 
shall  follow  the  curves  of  the  emotions  through 
the  ages,  their  movement  of  rise  and  fall,  the 
oppositions  and  side-influences  by  which  they 
have  been  determined.  Such  a  rising  wave  in  our 
time  is  the  growing  detestation  of  young  men  for 
socially  protected  immorality,  their  longing  for 
singleness  in  love.  An  opposing  influence,  again, 
is  the  disinclination  of  many  young  women  for 
love.     They  are  not   content,  like  the  neo-Pro- 


28  Love  and  Marriage 

testant  clergymen,  with  demanding  that  carnality 
shall  be  sanctified  by  marriage:  they  want  to  kill 
it.  They  do  not  merely  hate — and  with  reason — 
desire  apart  from  love :  they  depreciate  love  itself, 
even  when  it  appears  as  the  unity  of  soul  and 
senses.  According  to  them,  marriage  ought  to 
be  merely  the  highest  form  of  sympathetic  friend- 
ship, in  conjunction  with  a  sense  of  duty  directed 
to  the  procreation  and  rearing  of  children.  When 
marriage  is  freed  from  feelings  of  carnal  pleasure 
as  well  as  from  claims  of  personal  happiness,  when 
it  is  the  union  of  two  friends  in  the  duty  and  joy  of 
living  entirely  for  their  children — then  alone  will 
it  become  '  *  moral ' ' ! 

On  the  other  hand,  love,  treated  as  a  synthesis 
of  spiritual  sympath}^  and  the  life  of  the  race,  as 
the  vital  force  through  w^hich  a  human  being's 
existence  is  enhanced  and  beautified,  is  to  them 
worthless;  and  the  idea  of  a  distinction  between 
the  nature  of  woman  and  of  man  is  to  them  mean- 
ingless. They  demand  of  both  complete  abstinence 
outside  marriage,  and  within  it  they  permit  only 
certain  few  exceptions,  which  nature's  yet  im- 
perfect arrangements  render  necessary  for  the 
continuance  of  the  race.  With  the  advance  of 
science,  they  hope  that  chemistry  and  biology  will 
set  humanity  free  from  its  degradation  in  love,  just 
as  Werner  von  Heidenstam  expects  his  "food- 
powder"  to  bring  freedom  from  degradation  by 
hunger.  Possibly  they  will  both  be  right.  But 
with  these  possibilities  the  people  of  the  twentieth 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality     29 

century  have  nothing  to  do.  What  we  rather 
require  at  present  is  more  love — and  more  food— 
not  less. 

It  is  therefore  not  likely  that  the  line  we  have 
just  touched  upon  will  be  that  followed  by  the 
development  of  sexual  morality,  for  even  now 
an  increasing  proportion  of  mankind  shows  itself 
too  exacting  in  erotic  questions  to  allow  of  the 
realisation  of  the  above-mentioned  ideal  of  purity. 
No  thought  of  the  end  will  to  their  minds  sanctify 
a  means  which  when  deprived  of  love  appears  to 
them  ugly. 

The  children  begotten  under  a  sense  of  duty 
would  moreover  be  deprived  of  a  number  of  essen- 
tial conditions  of  life ;  among  others  that  of  finding 
in  their  parents  beings  full  of  life  and  radiating 
happiness,  which  constitutes  the  chief  spiritual 
nourishment  of  children — and  it  may  be  added 
that  parents  who  ''live  entirely  for  their  children" 
are  seldom  good  company  for  them. 

The  programme  of  morality  here  alluded  to  is 
explicable  from  a  justified  hatred  of  socially  pro- 
tected immorality  and  a — partly — justified  resent- 
ment against  the  love  which  leaves  the  child  out 
of  account.  But  its  solution  of  love's  deepest  con- 
flict— that  between  the  claims  of  the  individual 
and  those  of  the  race — is  prejudicial  to  the  will  of 
nature  as  well  as  to  the  conditions  of  civilisation. 
Independently  of  both  factors,  these  zealots  be- 
lieve they  can  attain  that  white  world  of  purity 
which  attracts   their   minds,  afflicted  as  they  are 


30  Love  and  Marriage 

by  the  impurity  and  misery  with  which  sexual 
relations  still  load  existence.  They  forget  that 
above  the  snow- line  only  the  poorest  forms  of 
life  can  flourish.  But  human  development  tends 
towards  the  production  of  an  ever  richer  and 
stronger  series  of  forms.  Any  attempt  to  separate 
morality  from  sensuousness  will  not  accelerate 
development  but  only  retard  it,  since  the  trans- 
plantation of  sexual  emotion  to  a  soil  other  than 
that  of  the  senses  is  an  impossibility  in  our 
present  earthly  conditions. 

The  demand  for  purity  which  aims  at  non- 
sensuousness — or  supersensuousness — may  per- 
haps provide  protection  from  minor  dangers.  In 
great  ones  it  will  be  as  futile  as  a  hedge  against  a 
forest  fire.  No  obstructing  of  appetites,  but  only 
their  release  in  other  directions,  can  really  purify 
them.  Passions  can  be  curbed  only  by  means  of 
stronger  passions.  In  the  same  appetite  and  the 
same  passion  in  which  the  danger  lies,  in  the 
instinct  of  love  itself,  we  have  the  true  starting- 
point  for  its  ennobling.  He  to  whom  the  destruc- 
tion of  this  instinct  is  a  passionate  desire  possesses 
in  this  passion  itself  a  prospect  of  attaining  his 
unnatural  end.  He,  again,  who  does  not  wish  to 
kill,  but  only  to  control  the  sexual  instinct,  will 
become,  in  his  struggle  against  this  desire — still 
immeasurably  stimulated  through  heredity  and 
social  custom — a  strong  and  proud  conqueror  only 
when  he  imagines  and  finally  experiences  unity  in 
love.     Assuredly  also  secondary  expedients  are  to 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    31 

be  found.  Before  all,  that  of  acquiring  the  instinct 
of  chastity  from  parents;  of  being  strength- 
ened and  protected  from  childhood  against  the 
dangers  of  callousness  as  well  as  those  of  soft- 
ness ;  of  being  instructed  in  a  refined  and  gentle 
way  of  the  great  purpose  and  great  dangers  of 
sexual  destiny ;  of  receiving  impressions  through 
public  opinion  of  the  possibility  of  self-control  and 
its  importance  to  the  happiness  of  the  individual 
himself  and  of  the  race;  of  avoiding  the  abuse 
of  means  of  enjoyment,  especially  of  intoxicating 
liquors,  which  both  directly  and  indirectly  weaken 
the  will-power  in  the  case  of  sexual,  as  of  all  other 
kinds  of,  temptation.  It  is  beyond  question  that 
noble  sport,  dancing,  and  games — and  they  are 
only  noble  when  practised  finely  and  worthily, 
with  the  mind  as  well  as  the  body — are  a  means 
of  replacing  and  controlling  the  sexual  instinct. 
Equally  certain  is  it  that  bodily  and  mental  la- 
bour, whether  undertaken  independently  or  as  a 
participation  in  some  form  of  social  endeavour,  is 
important  as  occupying  and  consuming  the  sexual 
powers  in  a  substituted  form.  All  genuine  artistic 
enjoyment  is  in  the  highest  degree  important  for 
the  ennobling  of  sexual  life.  But  all  this  self -dis- 
cipline, all  these  aids  from  the  world  of  beauty  and 
labour,  all  this  cultivation  of  the  body  to  strength 
and  beauty,  will  be  as  lines  without  a  centre  so 
long  as  they  do  not  all  lead  in  the  direction  of  love 
— love,  which  certain  preachers  of  morality  would 
leave  altogether  outside   the  question,  as  though 


32  Love  and  Marriage 

even  it  were  a  danger  and  a  temptation.  No  one 
would  venture  to  deny  that  healthy  habits  of  life 
and  strict  self-control  may  be  elevating  for  the 
individual,  even  if  love  means  nothing  in  his  life. 
But  life  in  its  entirety  gains  nothing  by  the  pro- 
duction of  hardened  or  harassed  ascetic  types, 
which  by  exhausting  bodily  exercise,  by  reading 
that  leaves  the  imagination  arid,  and  by  art  that 
smothers  nudity,  have  succeeded  in  lulling  to  sleep 
the  sensuousness  which,  nevertheless,  will  perhaps 
some  day  awake.  Life  has  as  little  joy  of  these 
harsh  guardians  of  their  "higher"  nature  as  they 
themselves  have  of  life.  We  have  not  gained  much 
if  we  are  to  have  a  youth  which  attains  sexual 
abstinence  at  the  cost  of  other  excellent  qualities 
equally  necessary  to  the  race.  A  youth,  with 
large  blinkers,  shunning  the  delights  of  the  senses, 
the  varied  joy  of  life,  the  mobility  of  the  fancy;  a 
youth  devoid  of  all  spiritual  adventure — such, 
with  all  its  ''purity,"  would  be  a  dead  asset  in 
life. 

Those  on  the  other  hand  who  preserve  but  con- 
trol the  wealth  of  suggestion  of  the  sexual  life  will 
be — even  though  their  control  has  not  always 
been  complete — of  infinitely  greater  service  to 
existence. 

The  prejudice  originally  fostered  by  Christian- 
ity, that  sexual  purity  is  in  itself  so  great  an  asset 
in  life  that  it  outweighs  the  sacrifice  of  all  others — 
this  prejudice  must  be  overcome.  A  person  is 
estimable  for  sexual  purity  only  to  the  extent  to 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    33 

which  it  fits  him  to  fulfil  the  purpose  of  life  for 
himself  and  for  the  race:  that  of  leading  an  ever 
higher  life.  His  purity  is  too  dearly  won  if  it 
costs  him,  and  through  him  the  race,  irreparable 
losses  of  vital  joy,  courage,  and  power. 

And  for  the  present — until  many  generations  of 
marriage  and  bringing-up  have  arrived  at  a  trans- 
formation of  present-day  human,  and  especially 
men's,  nature — the  demand  for  purity  will  not 
admit  of  realisation  without  such  losses;  that  is, 
if  this  demand  takes  the  shape  of  the  neo-Pro- 
testant  formula,  or,  even  more,  that  of  Tolstoy. 


Those  ascetics  who  recommend  only  self-control 
as  a  remedy  for  the  mastery  of  the  sexual  instinct, 
even  when  such  control  becomes  merely  obstruc- 
tive to  life,  are  like  the  physician  who  tried  only 
to  drive  the  fever  out  of  his  patient :  it  was  noth- 
ing to  him  that  the  sick  man  died  of  the  cure. 

But  these  ascetics  may  have  arrived  at  their 
fanaticism  by  two  different  paths.  One  group — ■ 
which  includes  most  of  the  fem^ale  ascetics — hates 
Cupid  because  he  has  never  shown  to  them  any 
favour.  The  other  group — embracing  the  major- 
ity of  male  ascetics — curse  him  because  he  never 
leaves  them  in  peace.  Meanwhile,  those  who  put 
a  tremendous  emphasis  on  purity  and  those  who 
rave  about  pleasure,  meet  on  the  common  ground 
of  distrust  of  love's  possibilities  of  development. 


34  Love  and  Marriage 

Love  to  them  means  desire  and  nothing  else ;  if  the 
soul  enters  into  it,  it  becomes  friendship  and  that 
alone.  They  have  never  experienced  a  love  which 
is  creative  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word.  Steril- 
ity— of  the  soul  or  the  body  or  both — is  the  mark 
of  the  only  love  these  two  groups  are  acquainted 
with.  The  slaves  of  eroticism  are  admirably 
characterised  by  Lord  Chesterfield's  confession 
that  he  had  made  violent  love  to  at  least  twenty 
women,  all  of  whom  personally  were  entirely 
indifferent  to  him.  They  know  nothing  of  the 
soul's  desire  for  one  single  person,  from  among  an 
unlimited  selection;  a  desire  which — when  it  is 
deeply  rooted — is  met  by  the  desire  of  the  other. 
They  do  not  know  that  the  elective  affinity  of 
sympathy  causes  the  one  to  gather  from  the  other's 
eyes  an  all-mastering,  liberating  force.  For  they 
themselves  experience  in  the  violence  of  desire 
only  prostration  and  humiliation  of  their  higher 
being.  An  otherwise  sensitive  man  may  feel 
unnerved  by  eroticism  to  such  a  degree  that  now 
he  will  wish  all  women  dead,  to  be  thus  freed 
from  his  thraldom;  now  he  will  desire,  as  Caligula 
did  of  the  Romans,  that  they  had  but  a  single 
neck — but  not  to  sever  it.  The  hatred  of  these 
men  for  eroticism  is  that  of  the  savage  for  the 
hideous  gods  on  whom  he  believes  himself  depend- 
ent, and  whom  he  knows  to  be  making  sport  of 
his  destiny.  And  nothing  is  more  certain  than 
that  love,  thus  conceived,  makes  men  degraded 
and  ridiculous.    Even  he  who  in  his  innermost  soul 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    35 

loves  tragedy  and  hates  farce,  is  made,  under  the 
attraction  of  this  love,  to  halt  between  the  two 
and  to  turn  his  life  into  a  tragi-comedy ;  for  in 
order  to  attain  to  the  true  tragic  greatness  a  man 
must  be  prepared  to  surrender  himself  uncondi- 
tionally to,  and  to  suffer  through  what  is  greatest 
in,  his  nature,  his  innermost  ego.  But  the  tragic 
destiny  is  apt  to  pass  a  man  by  against  his  inner- 
most will,  and  then  arises  the  impure  form  of  the 
tragic  that  we  have  just  mentioned.  Thus  men 
and  women,  who  have  only  sought  fresh  stimulants 
in  eroticism,  at  last  come  across  a  person  who  does 
not  understand  love  in  that  way,  and  who  ends 
the  game  for  ever.  Or  perchance  they  themselves 
are  gripped  by  a  great  emotion,  but  their  past 
destroys  the  hope  of  its  now  being  granted  to  them 
to  worship  in  any  holy  grove  the  divinity  to  whom 
hitherto  they  have  only  burned  paper  lanterns  in 
the  turmoil  of  a  fair.  In  most  cases  the  tragi- 
comedy takes  the  same  form  as  with  the  drunkard : 
satisfaction  becomes  more  and  more  impossi- 
ble; the  insatiable  one  is  continually  forced  to 
fly  to  grosser  means  in  order  to  quench  his 
desire  in  some  degree,  to  indulge  with  increas- 
ing frequency,  but  with  diminishing  festival 
gladness.  He  who  has  sunk  to  this  kind  of  in- 
toxication becomes  by  degrees  as  weak-willed, 
as  heartless,  as  devoid  of  character  and  conscience 
as  the  dipsomaniac,  and  equally  incapable  of 
selection  and  appreciation  within  the  sphere  of  his 
appetites.     The  most  sublime  woman's  love  will 


36  Love  and  Marriage 

at  last  leave  him  as  insusceptible  as  is  the  drunkard 
to  the  liquid  topaz  of  Rhenish  wine,  its  bouquet 
and  dewy  freshness.  ''Love's  freedom"  will 
finally  mean  to  him  nothing  but  freedom  from 
responsibility,  from  consideration,  from  danger, 
and  from  expense.  In  comparison  with  this  kind 
of  ''free  love,"  prostitution  is  doubtless  more  dan- 
gerous to  health,  but  far  less  injurious  to  personal- 
ity. Prostitution  detracts  from  personality  by  a 
cleaving  which  excludes  the  soul;  but  it  does 
not  consume  the  personality  in  the  same  way  as  the 
*'love"  with  which  a  man  buys  women  who  are 
not  venal.  If  they  expect  him  to  redeem  his  bonds 
in  true  coin,  they  will  be  disappointed.  Love  may 
possess,  according  to  his  belief ,  no  sterling  value: 
he  regards  it  as  always  a  forged  note  with  which 
nature  obtains  the  co-operation  of  human  beings 
— especially  of  women — to  her  ends. 

This  love  knows  no  atmosphere  but  that  of  the 
alcoves  where  it  has  pursued  its  bought  or  stolen 
pleasure.  It  has  never  breathed  the  air  of  the 
wilds,  the  air  which  quivers  with  sunshine  and 
shakes  with  storms;  the  air  through  which  mur- 
murs all  life's  longing  for  renewal,  all  the  wistful 
intuition  of  eternity  born  of  a  hunger  for  happi- 
ness, which  raises  generation  above  generation 
towards  unknown  goals;  an  air  which  im- 
measurably enhances  and  eternally  absorbs  vi- 
tality; the  air  of  the  wide  expanses,  where  fero- 
city and  madness  are  not  yet  extinct,  where  man 
and  woman  fight  their  eternal  battles  and  suffer 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    37 

their  eternal  pains;  pains  whose  source  even 
Lucretius  knew  to  be  dualism. 

But  that  only  unity  is  capable  of  sealing  up  this 
source — that  was  known  to  none  before  our  own 
time. 

In  literature  it  is  sometimes  from  the  alcoves, 
sometimes  from  these  wilds  that  the  complaint 
arises  of  the  mastery  of  the  sexual  instinct. 

In  the  works  of  not  a  few  of  the  writers  on 
morality  one  fails  to  find  even  a  suspicion  of  these 
wildernesses  of  human  life.  These  teachers  be- 
tray their  ignorance  in  a  boundless  narrow-mind- 
edness, a  narrow-mindedness  which  includes  the 
most  far-reaching  questions  of  humanity  among — 
gymnastic  and  bath  apparatus!  To  their  short- 
sighted view,  immorality  has  revealed  itself  not 
only  as  venal  but  in  the  shape  of  "free  love.'* 
They  do  not  suspect  that  free  love  as  well  as 
marriage  includes  many  degrees  of  morality  and 
immorality,  rising  above  or  sinking  below  the 
ethical  zero,  at  which  both  the  free  love  and  the 
marriage  of  the  majority  are  to  be  found. 

Between  the  free  or  lav/ful  love  which  becomes 
ugly,  revengeful,  or  murderous  and  the  love  which 
may  perhaps  take  its  own  life  but  never  that  of 
the  loved  one,  the  distance  is  therefore  great. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  enhancement  of  life 
there  will  be  nevertheless  a  great  difference  be- 
tween the  free — or  lawful — love  which  is  devoted, 
courageous,  self-sacrificing,  faithful,  and  that  which 
leaves  all  the  best  human  qualities  unemployed. 


38  Love  and  Marriage 

In  the  same  way,  the  distance  is  great  between  the 
sterile  erotic  "adventures"  of  a  paltry  vanity,  a 
sordid  hunger  for  sensation,  and  the  passion 
through  which  a  human  being  attains  to  new 
creative  power.  The  concession  to  the  storm  of 
passion  is  in  one  case  the  pennant,  in  the  other 
the  sail. 

The  artistic  temperament  often  expresses  itself 
in  the  demand  for  erotic  renewal.  But  while 
some  thus  increase  their  strength  and  health, 
others  grow  ever  poorer  and  uglier.  Goethe  was 
one  of  the  former  sort,  George  Sand  likewise. 
Natures  of  this  type  contain  a  wonderful  power  of 
renewal.  They  can  love  several  times  without 
becoming  erotically  depreciated.  Their  souls, 
like  the  volcanic  soils  of  the  South,  can  bear  three 
crops  without  being  exhausted.  But  this  is  not 
the  spiritual  soil  or  climate  of  humanity  at  large. 
And  even  such  Olympian  gods  and  goddesses 
suspect  that  love  may  have  some  secret  kept  from 
them.  Goethe,  who  prayed  of  fate  that  he  might 
only  be  required  to  love  once  in  another  existence, 
may  have  known  less  of  love  than  Dante,  to 
whom  was  vouchsafed  the  marvellous  vision  de- 
scribed in  the  wonderful  words 

Vede  il  cuor  tuo  ... 

George  Sand,  who  implored  of  the  gods  the 
flame  of  a  great  love,  was  never  so  thoroughly 
fired  thereby  as  her  sister  poet,  Elizabeth  Barrett 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    39 

Browning,  who  gave  witness  of  her  sympathy  for 
her  in  the  perfect  lines  which  begin, 

Thou  large-brained  woman  and  large-hearted  man    .  .  . 

But  great  love,  like  great  genius,  can  never  be 
a  duty:  both  are  life's  gracious  gifts  to  its  elect. 
There  can  he  no  other  standard  oj  morality  for  him 
who  loves  more  than  once  than  for  him  who  loves 
once  only :  that  of  the  enhancement  of  life.  He  who 
in  a  new  love  hears  the  singing  of  dried-up  springs, 
feels  the  sap  rising  in  dead  boughs,  the  renewal 
of  life's  creative  forces ;  he  who  is  prompted  anew 
to  magnanimity  and  truth,  to  gentleness  and  gen- 
erosity, he  who  finds  strength  as  well  as  intoxica- 
tion in  his  new  love,  nourishment  as  well  as  a  feast 
— that  man  has  a  right  to  the  experience.  Those 
on  the  other  hand — and  they  are  the  majority — 
whom  every  new  love  makes  poorer  in  the  qualities 
common  to  humanity  and  in  personal  sense  of 
power,  weaker  in  will,  less  efficient  in  work,  have, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  religion  of  Life,  no 
right  to  such  self-deterioration.  By  its  fruits 
love  is  known.  Nothing  is  truer  than  that  "  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  local  demoralisation."  A 
person  who  in  all  his  other  doings  is  healthy  and 
genuine;  who  continues  strong  and  sound  in  his 
work,  is  in  most  cases  moral  also  in  sexual  matters 
according  to  his  conscience — even  if  this  does  not 
harmonise  with  the  doctrine  of  monogamy.  He, 
on  the  other  hand,  who  shows  himself  a  cheat  or  a 


40  Love  and  Marriage 

wretch  in  his  other  dealings  will  probably  be 
the  same  in  the  affairs  of  love,  whether  his  morals 
are  those  of  monogamy  or  polygamy;  and  it  is 
therefore  more  unreasonable  to  judge  of  a  man's 
morality  in  other  matters  from  his  sexual  code 
than  it  is  to  judge  of  his  sexual  morality  from  his 
ethical  standpoint  in  other  questions.  Nor  does 
the  latter  afford  an  infallible  criterion,  for  these 
are  people  who  reach  the  summit  of  their  natures 
in  a  great  love,  but  remain  below  it  in  the  rest  of 
their  affairs .  Others  again  never  succeed  in  raising 
their  erotic  dealings  to  the  level  of  the  rest  of  their 
personality.  But  in  regard  to  the  accuracy  of  the 
result  the  latter  standard  is  nevertheless  as  supe- 
rior to  the  former  as  a  chemist's  scales  are  to  an 
old-fashioned  steelyard.  It  may  often  be  the 
case  that  a  person's  other  manifestations  are  in  a 
certain  sense  greater  or  less  than  himself,  but  his 
love,  on  the  other  hand,  will  in  a  thousand  cases 
to  one  be  his  inmost  self.  Great  or  mean,  rich  or 
poor,  pure  or  impure  as  he  is  in  that,,  so  will  one 
also  find  him  in  the  other  important  relations  of 
life.  Of  all  summary  characteristics  of  a  person, 
therefore,  none  is  more  sure  than  this  that,  as  a 
man  has  loved,  so  he  is. 


Although  in  this  way  a  follower  of  the  religion 
of  Life  regards  the  Tolstoy  code  of  sexual  morality 
as  profoundly  immoral,  he  recognises  that  it  has 
a  purer  as  well  as  a  less  pure  origin. 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality     41 

The  former  is  the  case  with  those  who  have 
suffered  deeply  from  the  passions  which  they  now 
advise  others  to  uproot  for  the  sake  of  their  peace; 
also  with  those  who  are  in  the  early  spring  of  their 
age,  when  life  is  still  asleep  and  nature  appears  to 
wear  the  hues  of  autumn. 

The  latter  is  the  case  with  those  for  whom  life 
has  been  all  autumn,  since  they  were  born  with- 
ered ;  women  and  men  who  have  been  seized  with 
a  hatred  of  the  conditions  of  procreation  because 
they  have  been  the  victims  of  those  vices  and 
sufferings  which  still  make  of  erotics  the  Divina 
Commedia  of  earthly  life;  but  not  as  in  that 
of  Dante  an  architectonic  arrangement  of  hell, 
heaven,  and  purgatory,  giving  them  a  definite 
sequence  in  space  and  time,  but  a  drama  wherein 
the  three  states  break  in  upon  one  another  like 
waves  on  the  shore.  But  whether  the  haters  of 
sexual  life  belong  to  the  exhausted  or  to  the  ex- 
cluded, to  the  sterile  or  to  the  immature,  the 
withered  or  the  poisoned,  they  may  doubtless  be 
entitled  individually  to  more  or  less  leniency; 
their  doctrine  of  morality,  however,  must  for  the 
reasons  we  have  given,  be  rejected  as  entirely 
worthless. 

The  same  holds  good  of  those  who  solve  the 
sexual  problem  as  though  it  were  one  with  the 
claim  of  individual  liberty,  irrespective  of  any 
consideration  for  the  race. 

These  latter  are  in  the  habit  of  comparing  the 
right  to  satisfy  sexual  desire  with  the  right  to 


42  Love  and  Marriage 

satisfy  hunger.  The  former,  on  the  other  hand, 
reject  this  comparison  as  untenable,  since,  of 
course,  a  person  can  Hve  healthily  in  lifelong  sexual 
abstinence.  Instead  of  it  they  compare  the  erotic 
passion  with  other  passions,  such  as  gambling 
and  drunkenness,  in  which  popular  opinion  recom- 
mends self-control  and  the  will  is  capable  of  it. 

Both  regard  the  question  in  an  equally  super- 
ficial way.  To  compare  the  fundamental  con- 
ditions of  natural  life,  the  motive  forces  of  civilised 
life,  love  and  hunger,  with  any  other  passion  than 
each  other,  falsifies  the  whole  statement  of  the 
problem.  The  instinct  of  love,  as  that  of  hunger, 
may  to  a  certain  extent  be  suppressed ;  in  both 
cases  an  increase  of  strength  in  a  certain  direction 
may  incidentally  be  gained.  But  both  needs  must 
be  satisfied  in  the  right  way  if  the  individual  being 
and  the  human  race  are  to  live  and  fulfil  the  inten- 
tion of  life  in  a  higher  development.  Fasting 
men  in  the  question  of  love  are  of  as  little  value 
to  the  enhancement  of  life  as  they  are  in  other 
fields. 

Christianity  has  so  accustomed  us  to  treat  sex- 
ual purity  as  a  question  of  the  individual  that, 
whether  we  regard  it  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  enthusiast  for  chastity  or  from  that  of  the 
enthusiast  for  liberty,  we  do  not  perceive  that, 
while  one  satisfies  hunger  to  prolong  one's  own 
life,  one  produces  children  to  prolong  that  of 
the  race.  This  renders  the  ascetic  talk  about 
the  innocuousness  of  abstinence  as  superficial  as 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    43 

the  alleged  right  to  satisfy  sexual  desire  with  the 
same  freedom  as  hunger. 

If  the  individual  remains  without  food,  he 
himself  loses  his  life ;  hut  if  he  remains  without  the 
right  of  procreation^  the  race  loses  the  life  he  might 
have  given  to  it.  Again,  if  the  individual  dies  of 
overeating,  he  is  the  only  one  who  suffers;  if  the 
sexual  instinct  is  abused  through  excess^  it  is  the 
race  that  suffers. 

The  existing  immorality  involves  an  uninter- 
rupted blood-poisoning  of  the  organism  of  hu- 
manity. The  existing  order  of  society  and 
morality  starves  this  organism.  It  is  not  only 
with  the  melancholy  their  own  inevitable  fate 
inspires  in  them,  but  also  with  indignation  against 
imnecessary  suffering,  that  innumerable  excellent 
men  and  women  know  that  they  are  condemned 
to  die  without  having  given  their  blood,  their 
souls,  as  an  inheritance  to  a  new  generation  of 
beings. 

It  is  beyond  all  question  that  the  instinct  of  the 
individual  to  continue  his  existence  in  the  race 
must  be  controlled,  if  it  is  to  be  an  enhancement, 
and  not  an  obstruction,  to  life.  But  this,  in  the 
most  literal  sense,  is  the  vital  question  for  the  in- 
dividual and  for  the  race :  how  and  why  and  to 
WHAT  EXTENT  this  control  is  to  he  exercised. 

Thus  both  the  life  of  the  individual  and  that  of 
the  race  are  enhanced  when  young  people  live  in 
abstinence  till  they  have  reached  full  maturity. 
The  development   of  the  race  gains    when    the 


44  Love  and  Marriage 

lives  less  worthy  to  survive  are  not  reproduced  in 
offspring;  but  the  life  of  the  individual  and  of 
the  race  suffers  when  young  people,  mature  and  in 
every  way  fit,  are  not  in  a  position  to  produce  and 
rear  offspring. 

At  a  low  stage  of  development,  hunger  as  well  as 
celibacy  has  been  an  ennobling  force.  Man  has 
gradually  learned  to  limit  the  quantity  of  his  food 
while  improving  its  quality  and  regulating  the 
supply.  He  now  knows  that  the  value  of  food 
depends  to  a  large  extent  on  the  enjoyment  it 
provides  and  the  gratification  with  which  it  is 
associated;  that  what  is  unappetising  does  not 
fulfil  its  purpose.  He  knows  too  that  the  organ- 
ism cannot  be  nourished  by  a  diet  accurately 
calculated  for  every  age  or  for  every  class  of  work, 
but  that  only  a  certain  superfluity  really  gives 
the  necessary  satisfaction.  Experience  has  shown 
that  too  great  economy  is  as  injurious  as  excess 
and  that  personal  needs  must  within  certain  limits 
be  the  deciding  criterion  in  a  full  and  life-enhancing 
system  of  diet.  Our  understanding  of  this  subject 
is  now  far  in  advance  of  the  ability  of  the  bulk  of 
mankind  to  follow  it.  In  the  question  of  the  racial 
instinct,  on  the  other  hand,  we  are  still  a  long  way 
from  knowledge  of  the  conditions  of  equilibrium, 
and  we  have  much  farther  still  to  go  before  we 
actually  arrive  at  that  equilibrium  between  the 
starvation  and  excess  in  the  satisfaction  of  this 
need  which  are  at  present  characteristic  of  our 
Western  commimities. 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    45 

It  was  natural  that  Luther  should  put  an  end  to 
fasting  as  well  as  celibacy.  Both  were  expressions 
of  the  Oriental  longing  to  attain  the  ideal  condition 
of  freedom  from  desire;  both  had  been  necessary 
factors  in  the  education  of  the  Germanic  peoples. 
But  at  the  same  time  it  was  unfortunately  in- 
evitable that  Luther's  work  of  liberation  should  be 
inconclusive ;  that  he  was  incapable  of  adopting 
the  belief  of  the  ancients  in  the  divinity  of  hu- 
manity, the  rights  of  nature;  that  he  continually 
sought  the  sanctification  of  human  nature  by 
means  exterior  to  itself.  Someone  has  said  that 
the  courage  of  Luther  the  monk  in  marrying  a  nun 
was  worth  more  than  all  his  doctrine.  That  is 
a  true  saying.  Filippo  Lippi  certainly  did  the 
same.  The  world  gained  thereby  some  mag- 
nificent madonnas  and — Filippino  Lippi.  But 
neither  Fra  Filippo  nor  any  other  vow-breaking 
monk  brought  about  a  revolution:  that  was  the 
achievement  of  Luther  alone,  who  asserted  his 
divine  and  natural  right  to  his  action. 

The  problem  of  the  present  day  is  to  follow  up 
the  consequences  of  this  declaration  of  natural 
rights. 

But  nature  is  no  more  infallible  than  she  is 
perfect,  no  more  reasonable  than  unreasonable, 
no  more  consistent  than  cortrary  in  her  purposes ; 
since  she  is  all  these.  She  may  be  transformed — 
ennobled  or  debased — by  culture,  and  therefore 
a  natural  declaration  of  rights  implies  only  the  right 
of  man  consciously  to  cultivate  nature,  so  that  in  a 


46  Love  and  Marriage 

certain  direction  she  may  fulfil  her  own  purpose 
with  a  gradual  approach  to  perfection;  or,  in 
other  words,  that  the  needs  created  by  nature  in 
and  with  human  beings  may  by  them  be  satisfied 
in  a  more  beautiful  and  healthy  way.  But  this 
culture  of  the  erotic  nature  cannot  find  its  moral 
criterion  in  any  divine  command  or  transcendental 
idea.  It  can  only  find  it  in  the  same  mysterious 
longing  for  perfection,  which  in  the  course  of  evolution 
has  raised  instinct  into  passion,  passion  into  love^ 
and  which  is  now  striving  to  raise  love  itself  to  an 
even  greater  love. 

There  are  some  who  think  that  love  should  there- 
fore advance  a  claim  to  a  glory  of  its  own,  which  is 
incompatible  with  its  "natural"  mission,  namely 
the  perpetuation  of  the  race. 

Every  one  knows,  however,  that  evolution  brings 
about  a  more  complicated,  heterogeneous  state 
than  the  original  one;  and  in  this  respect  love  is 
the  most  conspicuous  example.  Love — as  we  have 
already  shown — has  now  become  a  great  spiritual 
power,  a  form  of  genius  comparable  with  any  other 
creative  force  in  the  domain  of  culture,  and  its  pro- 
duction in  that  region  is  just  as  important  as  in  the 
so-called  natural  field.  Just  as  we  now  recognise 
the  right  of  the  artist  to  shape  his  work,  or  of  the 
scientific  man  to  carry  out  his  investigations  as 
it  seems  good  to  him,  so  must  we  allow  to  love  the 
right  to  employ  its  creative  force  in  its  own  way 
provided  only  that  in  one  way  or  another  it  finally 
conduces  to  the  general  good. 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality    47 

From  this  point  of  view,  then,  we  cannot  ex- 
tend the  proposition  that  love  is  an  end  in  itself 
so  far  as  to  say  that  it  may  remain  unfruitful.  It 
must  give  life;  if  not  new  living  beings  then  new 
values;  it  must  enrich  the  lovers  themselves  and 
through  them  mankind.  Here  as  everywhere  the 
truth  which  gives  faith  in  life  and  creates  morality 
is  to  be  found  included  in  the  experience  which 
creates  happiness;  and  the  most  serious  charge 
against  certain  forms  of  ''free  love"  is  that  it  is  un- 
happy love ;  for  there  is  no  unhappy  love  but  the 
imfruitful. 

The  capacity  of  mankind  for  forgetting  is  more 
wonderful  than  its  capacity  for  learning.  If  this 
were  not  so,  there  would  be  no  necessity  to  recall 
again  and  again  that  every  band  of  apostles  in- 
cludes a  Judas;  nay,  that  the  truth  can  only  be 
accepted  by  disciples  in  the  hands  of  its  enemies. 
One  is  reminded  by  this  that  every  reformation 
has  its  visionaries  who  arrest  the  blow  when  the 
reformers  have  put  their  axe  to  the  root  of  the 
tree;  and  one  is  not  surprised  that  with  every 
spring  flood  not  only  the  ice  but  the  earth  itself 
is  washed  away. 

Mankind  seems  determined  not  to  remem- 
ber. They  must  therefore  be  reminded  once  more 
that  the  new  morality's  band  of  combatants,  ever 
more  closely  united  and  more  rapidly  increasing, 
are  distinguished  from  their  scattered  followers  and 
from  their  light  advance-guard  by  the  knowledge 
that  love  is  subject  to  the  same  law  as  every  other 


48  Love  and  Marriage 

creative  force;  the  law  of  dependence  on  the  whole 
for  its  own  enhancement  to  its  highest  possible  value. 
Love,  indeed,  whose  origin  is  the  very  instinct  of 
the  race,  must  be  more  deeply  bound  up  with  the 
race  than  any  other  emotion.  And  experience 
shows  too  that  it  cannot  preserve  and  promote  its 
vital  force  if  it  lacks  any  connection  with,  and  does 
not  stand  in  some  relation,  either  of  giving  or 
receiving,  to  the  race.  It  is  therefore  an  indis- 
putable necessity  that  every  love  entirely  detached 
from  the  rest  of  humanity  must  die  for  want  of 
nourishment. 

But  the  band  which  attaches  it  to  humanity 
may  be  woven  of  several  materials ;  the  gift  to  the 
race  may  express  itself  in  various  ways.  In  one 
case  a  great  emotion  may  bring  about  a  tragic  fate, 
which  opens  the  eyes  of  humanity  to  the  red 
abysses  it  contains  within  itself.  Another  time 
it  may  create  a  great  happiness,  which  sheds  a 
radiance  around  the  happy  ones,  illuminating  all 
who  come  near  them.  In  many  cases  love  trans- 
lates itself  into  intellectual  achievements,  or  use- 
ful social  work;  in  most  it  results  in  two  more 
perfect  human  beings,  and  new  creatures,  still 
more  perfect  than  themselves. 

Those  couples,  on  the  other  hand,  who  have 
shed  no  radiance  either  in  their  life  or  in  their 
death ;  who  have  not  taken  one  step  on  the  golden 
ladder  to  a  higher  humanity,  and  who  have  only 
found  in  each  other  the  lust  of  the  beasts — without 
their  readiness  to  sacrifice  themselves  for  offspring 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality     49 

— these  are  immoral,  since  their  love  has  not  served 
the  ascending  development  of  life.  Whether  this 
lifeless  love  has  taken  the  form  of  a  light  and 
irregular  or  of  a  lifelong  and  lawful  connection,  it 
has  in  no  respect  enriched  the  life  of  the  couple, 
much  less  therefore  that  of  the  race. 

With  the  enhancement  of  life  as  love's  standard 
of  morality,  it  is  thus  impossible,  as  we  maintained 
at  the  beginning,  to  decide  in  advance  whether 
either  a  free  or  a  married  love,  an  interrupted  or  a 
continued  marriage,  voluntary  childlessness  or  par- 
entage, is  moral  or  immoral ;  for  the  result  depends 
in  each  individual  case  on  the  will,  the  choice, 
which  lies  behind  it,  and  only  the  development  of 
events  can  decide  the  nature  of  this  will  ajid  this  choice. 

It  is  true  enough  that  human  beings  are  often 
weaker  in  execution  than  in  resolve.  But  then 
they  must  content  themselves  with  enlarging  old 
ideas  of  morality,  for  such  as  they  are  not  called  to 
make  new  morals.  And  it  is  true  that  life  occa- 
sionally lends  an  unexpected  hand  in  the  correc- 
tion of  a  mistake;  but  as  a  rule  the  consequences 
are  as  the  cause.  A  woman  who  for  purely  selfish 
reasons  shuns  motherhood  will  thus  usually  show 
herself  to  be  a  mistress  without  affection;  a  wife 
who  breaks  loose  from  a  marriage  before  she  has 
tried  to  extract  from  it  its  possibilities  of  happiness 
will  probably  throw  away  her  chances  in  the  same 
way  in  a  new  one.  No  relation  can  be  better  than 
the  persons  who  compose  it.  This  law  is  so 
inflexible  that  the  administration  of  moral  justice 

4 


50  Love  and  Marriage 

might  confidently  be  left  to  time.  This  does  not 
imply  that  love,  more  than  any  other  expression 
of  life,  can  be  withdrawn  from  human  arbitration, 
but  it  implies  that  such  arbitration  will  he  faulty 
when  it  is  decided  by  the  forms  of  a  union  instead  of 
by  its  results.  Here  we  are  on  the  watershed 
between  the  old  and  the  new  morality.  The 
course  of  the  former  is  determined  by  doubts  of, 
and  that  of  the  latter  by  belief  in,  the  resources  of 
the  power  in  human  nature.  The  doubts  of  the 
former  lead  to  the  obligation  of  the  individual  to 
submit  himself  to  the  claims  of  society ;  the  belief 
of  the  latter  leads  to  the  liberty  of  the  individual 
to  choose  his  own  duty  to  society.  On  account 
of  the  weakness  of  human  nature,  and  of  conse- 
quent care  for  the  well-being  of  society,  the  con- 
servatives claim  that  the  individual  must  convince 
society  in  advance  of  his  willingness  to  serve  its 
ends  in  his  love,  by  renouncing  a  part  of  his  easily 
misused  liberty.  On  account  of  the  richness  of 
human  nature  and  the  claims  of  development,  the 
reformers  demand  for  the  individual  the  right  of 
serving  the  community  with  his  love  according  to 
his  own  choice,  and  of  using  the  freedom  of  his  love 
under  his  own  responsibility. 

He  who  does  not  allow  his  eye  to  be  caught  by 
the  light  straws  that  float  and  are  lost  upon  the 
stream  of  time  will  soon  become  aware  that  the 
new  morality  is  growing  deeper  and  deeper  with 
fresh  tributaries. 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality     51 

Christian  morality  starts  from  the  conception 
of  human  nature  as  complete  in  its  constitution 
though  not  in  its  culture,  and  of  a  human  being 
divided  into  body  and  soul.  The  soul  is  of  divine 
origin,  but  fallen,  and  must  be  raised  again  by  a 
process  of  culture  determined  by  religion,  the  ob- 
ject of  which  is  that  mankind  may  attain  the 
ideal  provided  by  religion,  that  is,  Christ.  ' 

There  is  another  morality  which  rests — or  which 
rested — upon  the  belief  in  the  inborn  divinity  of 
human  nature  and  the  equality  of  all  men;  this 
belief  ended  in  the  efforts  of  the  eighteenth  century 
towards  universal  welfare,  and  in  the  expectation 
that  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity  could  be 
realised  even  with  the  existing  human  material. 

The  new  morality,  on  the  other  hand,  adopts 
humanism  in  the  form  of  evolutionism.  It  is 
determined  by  a  monistic  belief  in  the  soul  and 
body  as  two  forms  of  the  same  existence;  by  the 
belief  of  evolutionism  that  man's  psycho-physical 
being  is  neither  fallen  nor  perfect,  but  capable  of 
perfection ;  that  it  is  susceptible  of  modification  for 
the  very  reason  that  it  is  not  constitutively  completed. 
Both  utilitarian  and  Christian  humanism  saw 
** culture,"  "progress,"  and  "development"  in 
man's  improvement  of  material  and  non-material 
resources  within  and  without  himself.  But  evolu- 
tionism knows  that  all  this  has  only  been  the  pre- 
paration for  a  development  which  is  to  improve 
and  ennoble  the  very  material  of  mankind,  hithertOy 
so  to  speak,  only  experimentally  produced. 


52  Love  and  Marriage 

Our  present  "nature"  means  only  what,  at  this 
stage  of  development,  is  psychologically  and 
physiologically  necessary  that  we  may  exist  as 
people  of  a  certain  time,  a  certain  race,  a  certain 
nation.  Hairiness  was  once  * 'nature,"  as  naked- 
ness is  now.  Marriage  by  capture  was  once 
"natural,"  as  courtship  is  now.  What  new  trans- 
formations the  race  is  destined  to  undergo; 
what  losses  and  gains,  at  present  unsuspected,  of 
organs  and  senses,  faculties  and  properties  of  the 
soul,  await  it  —  this  is  the  secret  of  the  future. 
But  the  more  mankind  is  convinced  of  its  power 
of  intervening  in  its  own  development,  the  more 
necessary  does  a  conscious  purpose  become.  We 
must  understand  what  obstructions  we  will  root 
out,  what  roads  we  will  block  up,  and  what  sacri- 
fices we  will  impose  upon  ourselves. 

The  new  morality  is  in  the  stage  of  enquiry  on 
many  questions — such  as  labour,  crime,  and 
education — but  above  all  on  the  sexual  life.  Even 
on  this  question  it  no  longer  accepts  command- 
ments from  the  mountains  of  Sinai  or  Galilee; 
here  as  everywhere  else  evolutionism  can  only 
regard  continuous  experience  as  revelation.  Evolu- 
tionism does  not  reject  the  results  of  historical 
experience,  nor  the  fruits  of  Christian-human 
civilisation — even  if  it  were  possible  to  "reject" 
what  has  become  soul  and  blood  in  humanity. 
But  it  regards  the  course  of  historical  civilisation 
that  lies  behind  us  as  a  battlefield  of  mutually 
conflicting   ideas    and   purposes,    with   no   more 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality     53 

conscious  plan  than  the  warfare  of  savages.  Not 
until  humanity  chooses  its  ends  and  its  means — 
and  makes  its  more  immediate  end  the  enhance- 
ment of  all  that  is  at  present  characteristic  of 
humanity — not  until  it  begins  to  measure  all  its 
other  gains  and  losses  by  the  degree  in  which  they 
further  or  retard  that  enhancement,  w411  it  also 
adopt  the  right  attitude  towards  its  inheritance 
from  former  ages.  Then  it  will  reject  what  hinders 
and  select  what  assists  its  struggle  for  the  strengthen- 
ing of  its  position  as  humanity  and  its  elevation  to 
super -humanity. 

We  stand  on  the  verge  of  a  stage  of  culture 
which  will  be  that  of  the  depths,  not,  as  hitherto, 
of  the  surface  alone;  a  stage  which  will  not  be 
merely  a  culture  through  mankind,  but  culture  of 
mankind.  For  the  first  time,  the  great  fashioners 
of  culture  will  be  able  to  work  in  marble,  instead 
of,  as  hitherto,  being  forced  to  work  in  snow. 
The  true  relation  between  the  rights  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  those  of  the  race  will  become  in  the 
field  of  love  as  important  as  the  relation  between 
the  rights  of  the  individual  and  those  of  society  in 
the  field  of  labour.  The  conditions  of  labour 
raise  or  lower  the  value  of  the  present  as  well  as 
of  the  future  generation.  The  same  holds  good — 
and  in  an  even  higher  degree — of  the  conditions 
of  love. 

How  the  boundary  will  finally  be  defined — in 
the  one  case  as  in  the  other — we  cannot  know  at 
present.     It  is  true  that  there  is  here  and  there  a 


54  Love  and  Marriage 

glimmer  of  light  which  already  shows  the  way; 
but  until  these  gleams  become  more  frequent, 
mankind  can  only  grope  and  stumble  along  the 
path  by  which  perhaps  it  will  one  day  march  in 
full  daylight. 

Many  who  regard  sexual  morality  from  the 
point  of  view  of  evolutionism  have  never  enquired 
whether  monogamy — and  an  increasingly  perfect 
monogamy — is  really  the  best  means  of  human 
development.  These  evolutionists  unite  with  the 
champions  of  Christian  idealism  in  condemnation 
of  "the  immorality  of  the  present  day,"  which 
declares  itself  in  sexual  matters  in  the  form  of  free 
connections  outside  matrimony;  of  an  increase  of 
divorce  among  those  married ;  of  disinclination  for 
parentage  and  of  the  claim  of  unmarried  women 
to  the  right  of  motherhood.  Other  evolutionists 
think  that  all  this  is  the  earliest  announcement  of 
the  awakening  which  will  assign  to  love  its  full 
importance,  not  only  for  the  perpetuation,  but  for 
the  progress  of  the  race.  With  the  will  of  active, 
effective  life  they  attack  the  current  standard  of 
morality  and  the  rights  of  the  family.  The  object 
of  the  conflict  is  not  itself  new;  what  is  new  is 
only  the  boldness,  fostered,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, by  the  evolutionary  idea,  of  thus  assert- 
ing the  rights  of  love  against  those  of  society,  the 
code  of  the  future  against  that  of  the  past. 

The  new  morality  knows  that  in  a  wide  sense 
civilisation  will  only  attain  lasting  power  over 
nature    when    it    combines    higher    emotions  of 


Development  of  Sexual  Morality     55 

happiness  with  the  ends  in  the  pursuit  of  which 
harsh  means  may  be  demanded.  That  creed  of 
life  which  makes  the  mission  of  the  race  co- 
operate with  personal  happiness  in  love,  will  also 
demand  of  the  latter  the  sacrifices  which  the  former 
renders  necessary.  But  it  must  not  augment 
these  requirements  by  ascetic  demands  for  purity 
which  are  meaningless  for  the  racial  mission.  The 
followers  of  this  creed  will  take  love  as  the  criterion 
of  the  individual's  sexual  emotions  and  actions, 
above  all  because  they  believe  that  the  happiness 
of  the  individual  is  the  most  important  condition 
also  for  the  enhancement  of  the  race. 

They  desire  to  fill  the  earth  with  hungerers  for 
happiness,  since  they  know  that  only  thus  will 
earthly  life  attain  its  inmost  purpose,  that  of 
forming — in  an  altogether  new  sense — creatures 
of  eternity. 

The  word,  which  through  Eros  became  flesh  and 
dwells  among  us,  is  the  profoundest  of  all:  Joy 
is  perfection. 

If  we  accept  this  dictum  of  Spinoza  as  the  high- 
est revelation  of  life's  meaning,  our  eyes  are  at 
the  same  time  opened  to  the  harmony  of  exist- 
ence. We  perceive  that  the  more  perfect  race 
will  be  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word  created  hy 
love.  But  this  will  not  take  place  until  love  has  be- 
come a  religion,  the  highest  expression  of  the  fear 
of  life — not  the  fear  of  God; — when  faith  in  life 
has  scattered  the  superstition  and  unbelief  which 
still  disfigure  love.     When  the  eldest  of  the  gods 


56  Love  and  Marriage 

has  no  other  god  before  him,  then  will  the  mon- 
sters who  now  fill  the  murky  deeps  over  which 
the  spirit  of  the  god  moves  perish  in  the  light  of 
the  new  day  of  creation. 


For  the  sake  of  clearness,  it  has  been  necessary 
to  sum  up  here  the  main  ideas  of  the  following 
exposition.  In  some  measure  it  will  therefore  be 
also  necessary  to  return  to  them  during  the  follow- 
ing treatment  of  the  movements  which  have  the 
deepest  influence  on  sexual  morality :  the  evolution 
of  love,  its  freedom  and  its  selection  ;  the  claims  of 
a  right  to  and  an  exemption  from  motherhood ;  of 
collective  motherhood,  of  free  divorce,  and  of  a  new 
marriage  law. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LOVE 

Just  as  the  Swedes,  in  comparison  with  some 
other  of  the  Germanic  peoples,  are  behindhand 
in  their  view  of  V amour  passion,  so  are  the  Ger- 
manic races  as  a  whole  behindhand  as  compared 
with  the  foremost  Latin  peoples.  The  Gallic 
counterpart  of  the  Lutheran  doctrine  of  marriage 
is  to  be  found  in  another  monk,  Luther's  con- 
temporary, Rabelais,  with  his  joyous  project  of 
a  new  kind  of  convent,  where  every  monk  should 
have  his  nun,  with  the  power  of  separating  after 
a  year  of  probation;  a  plan  which  perhaps  would 
not  have  been  a  much  more  roundabout  way  of 
educating  mankind  to  love  than  was  the  Lutheran 
doctrine  of  marriage.  Nothing  is  farther  from 
the  truth  than  that  the  Reformation  increased 
respect  for  love  and  woman.  It  raised  the  esteem 
for  the  married  state  as  compared  with  the  un- 
married, but  it  enhanced  neither  the  position 
of  woman  in  matrimony  nor  the  importance  of 
love  in  regard  to  marriage.  Even  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  the  Latin  nations  render  a  homage  to  woman 
which  to-day  is  still  almost  incomprehensible  to  the 

57 


58  Love  and  Marriage 

man  of  a  Germanic  race.  And  if,  on  the  one  hand, 
this  homage  took  the  form  of  the  cult  of  Venus, 
which  is  born  in  the  Latin  blood,  on  the  other, 
it  expressed  through  the  cult  of  Mary  its  reverence 
for  what  is  deepest  in  woman,  motherhood. 
Even  to-day,  the  Frenchwoman  is  esteemed  not 
according  to  her  age  but  according  to  her  qualities. 
It  is  not  only  the  mothers  who  worship  their  sons, 
but  also  the  latter  their  mothers;  and  not  only 
the  mother,  but  besides  her  every  admirable 
elderly  woman  receives  attention  in  social  life 
as  in  the  family  from  men  of  all  ages.  The 
middle-class  wife — though  indeed  at  the  cost 
of  the  children — co-operates  in  her  husband's 
calling  with  a  seriousness  unknown  in  the  Ger- 
manic middle-class.  In  France  as  in  Italy, 
family  life  has  a  kind  of  warm  intimacy  which 
the  German  does  not  understand;  since  the  Latin 
temperament  lacks  that  geniality  which  sheds 
its  light  over  the  frequently  rough  lines  and  harsh 
colours  of  the  landscape  of  the  Germanic  soul. 
It  is  rather  the  coldness  of  his  disposition  than 
the  strength  of  his  soul  that  makes  the  German 
so  much  less  erotic  than  the  Southerner;  it  is 
more  indifference  to  woman  than  respect  for  her 
that  expresses  itself  in  the  distinction  between 
the  erotic  customs  of  North  and  South.  But 
when  all  this  has  been  admitted  for  the  sake  of 
justice,  we  may  fairly  lay  stress  upon  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Germanic  spirit  in  the  struggle  to 
put  an  end  to  that  cleavage  between  love  and 


The  Evolution  of  Love  59 

marriage  which  has  prevailed  among  the  Southern 
nations  ever  since  the  days  of  the  Courts  of  Love. 
For  the  pecuHarity  of  the  Gallic  spirit  is  to  dis- 
criminate.    This  gives  it  the  power  of  following 
out  an  idea  to  its  uttermost  conclusions,  but  at 
the  same  time  renders  it  liable  in  actual  life  to 
split  itself  up  among  superficialities.     The  strength 
of  the  German,  on  the  other  hand,  is  his  desire 
of    unity.     This    makes   him   inconsistent    as    a 
thinker,  since  he  must  include  everything,  but 
against  this  it  makes  him  strive  after  consistency 
in    life.     The   same    deep    sense    of   personality 
which  created  Protestantism  has  in  the  Germanic 
world  sought  to  make  love  as  well  as  faith  the 
affair  of  the  individual  and  to  make  marriage 
one    with    love.     Among    the    educated    classes 
in  the  North,  marriages  of  convenience  or  those 
arranged  by  the  family  are  now  things  of  the 
past,  while  in  the  Latin  world  they  are  still  the 
rule,    though   with   increasingly   frequent   excep- 
tions.    But  in  most  cases  it  is  still  in  free  con- 
nections, before  and  during  marriage,   that  the 
Frenchman    engages    his    erotic    feelings ;     and 
the    French    wife    has    abimdantly    shown    the 
emptiness  of  the  assertion  that  '*a  woman  always 
loves  the  father  of  her  child, "  the  most  dangerous 
of  the  false  doctrines  which  have  led  women  into 
marriage  and    thence   into  adultery.     In  Shake- 
speare, on  the  other  hand,  we  already  find  the  wife 
and  the  mistress  united  in  the  same  person,  and 
it  is  always  in  English  literature  that  we  meet 


6o  Love  and  Marriage 

with  the  highest  expression  of  the  Germanic 
feeUng  for  unity  in  love.  Since  the  mediaeval 
minnesingers  ceased  to  sing,  the  literature  of 
Germany  and  Scandinavia,  dominated  by  Lu- 
theranism,  bears  witness  chiefly  of  "the  lust  of  the 
flesh."  Women  are  esteemed  according  as  they 
fulfil  their  destiny  as  bearers  of  children  and 
housewives.  The  abolition  of  the  cloister  and 
celibacy  has,  however,  brought  about  the  good 
result  of  the  transmission  of  spiritual  forces  which 
formerly  died  with  the  individual.  And  it  may 
well  have  been  through  some  of  those  who  formerly 
took  refuge  with  their  idealism  in  a  cloister,  that 
the  longing  for  a  great  love  has  been  left  as  an 
inheritance  to  sons  and  daughters. 

In  Germany,  the  leading  poet  of  the  ''age 
of  enlightenment,"  Gottsched,  asserts  woman's 
right  to  culture;  in  America,  during  the  War  of 
Independence,  the  women  gave  evidence  of  their 
sense  of  citizenship;  and  it  was  during  a  more 
recent  struggle  for  liberty,  that  against  slavery, 
that  the  woman's  question  came  to  the  front 
in  that  country. 

In  France,  the  eighteenth  century,  more  than 
any  other  period  of  history,  is  "the  century  of 

man."  The  salons  are  the  focussing  point 
dl  ideas;  the  most  eminent  men  write  for 
,/omen,  \'vho  become  electric  batteries  from  which 
the  ideas  of  the  time  send  out  kindling  sparks 
in  all  directions.  Thus  the  women  of  France 
help   to   prepare   the  French  Revolution.     Dur- 


The  Evolution  of  Love  6i 

ing  the  Revolution,  Olympe  de  Gouges  writes 
her  "declaration  of  the  rights  of  woman,"  as 
a  counterpart  to  that  of  the  rights  of  man, 
and  Condorcet  speaks  in  support  of  woman's 
claims.  The  same  spirit  of  a  new  age  confronts 
us  in  Mary  Wollstonecraft's  Ä  Vindication  of  the 
Rights  of  Woman  (1792),  as  also  in  Hippel's  Ueher 
die  hilrgerliche  Verhesserung  der  Weiber,  pub- 
lished the  same  year,  and  in  the  Swede  Thorild's 
contemporary  treatise  Om  kvinnokönets  naturliga 
höghet  ("On  the  Natural  Greatness  of  Women"). 
Each  in  its  way  was  a  remarkable  sign  of  the 
time  which  already  included  the  whole  "emanci- 
pation" programme  of  equality  of  position:  the 
same  rights  for  woman  as  for  man  as  regards 
education,  labour,  a  share  in  legislation,  and 
an  equality  of  position  under  the  law  and  in 
marriage. 

Isolated  instances  of  emancipated  women  were 
nothing  new.  In  Greece,  the  type  was  common 
enough  to  be  employed  in  comedy;  in  Rome, 
self-supporting  women  were  to  be  found ;  during 
the  Middle  Ages  not  only  Bridget  but  many 
another  woman — in  the  quality  of  abbess  or 
regent — exercised  a  great  and  often  beneficial 
activity.  The  days  of  antiquity,  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  of  the  Renaissance  all  possessed  female 
scholars,  physicians,  and  artists.  But  it  is  not 
until  the  century  of  the  great  Revolution  that  we 
find  among  women  themselves  as  well  as  among 
certain  men  a  persistent  and  conscious  striving  to 


62  Love  and  Marriage 

elevate  the  education  and  to  secure  the  rights  of 
women. 

And  wherever  this  striving  has  been  profound, 
it  has  been  united  with  the  desire  to  reform  the 
position  of  woman  in  love  and  in  marriage. 


It  is  a  very  common  but^erroneous  opinion 
that  monogamy  has  given  rise  to  love.  Love 
appears  already  among  animals,  and  with  them, 
as  in  the  world  of  men,  has  shown  itself  inde- 
pendent of  monogamy. 

The  origin  of  the  latter  in  human  society  was 
the  relation  of  proprietorship,  religious  ideas, 
considerations  of  collective  utility,  but  not  per- 
ception of  the  importance  of  love's  selection. 
On  the  contrary,  love  has  been  in  perpetual 
strife  with  monogamy,  and  it  is  therefore  a  pro- 
found mistake  to  suppose  that  the  higher  view 
of  love  has  been  formed  solely  through  monogamy. 
The  idea  of  love  has  been  developed  in  as  great 
a  degree  by  attacks  on  marriage  as  in  association 
with  marriage  itself. 

While,  in  spite  of  the  accumulation  of  evidence 
to  the  contrary,  Christianity's  share  in  the  origin 
of  human  love  is  constantly  exaggerated,  suf- 
ficient stress  has  not  been  laid  upon  its  indirect 
influence  on  the  development  of  sexual  love.  It  is 
true  that  all  over  the  world — from  Iceland  to 
Japan — songs  and  legends  are  to  be  fotmd  which 


The  Evolution  of  Love  63 

give  glorious  evidence  of  the  power  of  love  in  the 
heart  of  man  in  all  ages.  But  the  sexual  emotion, 
nevertheless,  held  a  subordinate  position  in  the 
life  of  the  human  soul  until  Christianity  granted 
to  woman  also  a  soul  to  save — in  other  words,  a 
personality  to  cultivate.  Christianity,  moreover 
commended  the  womanly  rather  than  the  manly 
virtues,  and  although  Christ  himself  ignored 
woman,  love,  and  the  family  life,  his  ethics  became 
thus  in  an  indirect  form  a  glorification  of  woman. 
The  importance  attached  byChristianity  to  the 
value  of  the  individual  as  a  soul — in  contradis- 
tinction to  the  insistence  by  paganism  on  his 
value  as  a  citizen — was  likewise  one  of  the  unseen 
contributary  causes  which  during  the  Middle 
Ages  made  love  a  life-power. 

In  antiquity,  marriage  was  a  duty  to  society; 
friendship,  on  the  other  hand,  was  the  free  expres- 
sion of  sympathy.  Not  until  man's  consciousness 
admitted  a  soul  in  woman,  could  personal  love 
arise.  But  so  mysterious  are  the  influences 
through  which  the  soul  of  mankind  grows,  that 
the  youthful  love  of  the  ancients  indirectly 
developed  the  need  of  sympathy  also  between 
grown  men  and  women ;  and  the  suppression  of 
the  sexual  instinct  by  Catholic  asceticism  in- 
directly furthered  the  introspective,  soulful  emo- 
tion of  love  which  rises  above  sensuality. 

The  modern  view  of  love  as  the  most  lofty 
state  of  the  soul  had  already  taken  shape  in  the 
time  of  the  Crusades  sufficiently  to  bring  into 


64  Love  and  Marriage 

existence  at  this  period  the  Courts  of  Love  in 
the  south  of  France.  Woman,  the  knight,  and 
the  singer  together  intensify  and  refine  love,  in 
part  by  laying  stress  upon  its  incompatibility 
with  marriage ! 

Students  have  shown  how  the  refined  expression 
of  love  in  poetry  corresponds  with  the  forms  of 
the  sexual  life  of  the  upper  classes,  since  monogamy 
became  the  law  and  a  secret  polygamy  the  custom. 
This  dual  division  of  the  erotic  feelings  has  on  the 
one  side  brought  about  such  fine  and  lofty,  and 
on  the  other  such  coarse  and  debased  manifes- 
tations that  neither  one  nor  the  other  has  any 
counterpart  among  the  nations — or  classes  within 
a  nation — where  this  division  is  unknown,  since 
there  the  freedom  of  sexual  choice  is  undisputed. 

And  this  is  natural;  for  there  the  sexual  life 
preserves  its  innocence  of  ''paradise,"  one  of 
simple  animality  perturbed  by  no  higher  con- 
sciousness. This  innocence  can  only  be  replaced 
on  a  higher  plane  after  a  long  period  of  develop- 
ment. The  way  thither  is  by  the  cleavage  which 
"the  division  of  labour"  involves  even  in  regard 
to  the  development  of  the  feelings. 

The  Middle  Ages  were  thus  only  capable  of 
dividing  love  from  marriage.  This  is  witnessed 
by  the  greatest  singers  of  love  and  by  the  greatest 
love  stories.  Tristan  and  Isolde  in  the  world  of 
poetry,  Abelard  and  Heloise  in  that  of  reaHty, 
are  the  highest  types  of  the  new  age,  even  then 
dawning,   which   is   finally   to   bring   about   the 


The  Evolution  of  Love  65 

declaration  of  rights  of  human  emotion  as  of 
human  thought.  These  lovers,  united  in  Hfe  and 
death,  are  the  highest  testimony  of  the  Middle 
Ages  to  that  free  love  which  makes  its  own  laws 
and  abolishes  all  others;  to  that  great  love  which 
is  the  sense  of  eternity  of  great  souls,  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  ephemeral  inclination  of  small  ones. 

Scholasticism,  ever  extending  introspective  psy- 
chology; mysticism,  ever  refining  the  life  of  the 
soul  devoted  to  God,  unconsciously  pour  oil  upon 
the  red  flame  of  love  as  upon  the  white  flame 
of  faith.  The  Vita  Nuova  of  love  breaks  out  in 
the  fire  of  poetry,  whose  most  aspiring  flame  was 
Dante.  It  lived  on  in  the  souls  of  the  elect 
among  Latin  peoples.  The  Platonism  of  the 
Renaissance  refined  the  mediasval  conception  of 
love  as  the  most  excellent  means  of  bringing  to 
perfection  the  highest  human  qualities.  And 
thus  was  established  the  right  of  lovers  to  inde- 
pendence of  the  customs  of  society. 

It  is  significant  that,  at  the  mediasval  Courts 
of  Love  as  at  the  courts  of  the  Renaissance  and 
in  the  contests  of  wit  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
women  are  granted  not  only  the  same  right  of 
sentiment  as  men  but  also  the  same  liberty  of 
using  their  spiritual  gifts ;  for  every  intensifying 
of  love  is  connected,  openly  or  otherwise,  with 
the  augmentation  of  woman's  spiritual  life  and 
with  man's  thus  enhanced  estimation  of  the  value 
of  her  personality.  Instead  of  being  to  him 
"the    sex,"    the    means    of    enjoyment,    woman 

6 


66  Love  and  Marriage 

becomes  the  mistress,  when  love  has  come  to 
mean  an  exclusive  desire  for  one  woman,  who 
is  only  to  be  won  by  devoted  service.  Whenever 
woman  has  taken  the  lead  in  erotic  matters, 
man's  love  has  been  ennobled.  In  Shakespeare, 
we  find  the  whole  of  the  preceding  spiritual 
culture  summed  up.  All  his  best  women  are 
chaste  in  the  same  degree  as  they  are  devoted, 
but  they  are  also  in  the  same  degree  spiritually 
rich  and  complete  personalities.  Therefore  they 
are  also  leaders  through  their  clear-sightedness 
and  promptness  in  the  moment  of  action.  And 
although  Shakespeare,  like  every  other  great 
poet,  formed  his  women  more  of  the  material 
of  dreams  than  of  reality;  although  the  foremost 
men  of  the  Italian  Renaissance  probably  had 
more  often  a  Boccaccio's  than  a  Petrarch's  ex- 
perience of  love;  although  the  age  of  baroque 
turned  le  Pays  du  tendre  into  a  stiff  garden  sur- 
rounding decorative  figures,  nevertheless  life 
itself,  especially  the  life  of  the  Latin  peoples — ■ 
as  well  as  their  best  literature — can  always  show 
proud  and  beautiful  examples  of  loving  couples 
and  sacrifices  for  love,  even  in  that  century  whose 
male  "philosophers"  deprived  woman  of  the 
lead,  when  love  became  ' '  galanterie, "  gay  and 
ugly  by  turns. 

At  the  time  when  Rousseau  appeared,  love 
was  equally  degraded  through  Latin-Epicurean 
immorality  and  through  Germanic-Lutheran 
"morality." 


The  Evolution  of  Love  67 

What  he  did  for  love  was  the  same  that  he 
would  have  done  for  the  lungs,  if  in  one  of  the 
boudoirs  of  those  days,  stuffy  with  perfumes  and 
wax  candles,  he  had  thrown  open  the  windows 
to  the  summer  night,  with  its  scent  of  productive 
earth  and  blossoming  plants,  dark  masses  of 
foliage  and  the  star-sown  sky. 

But  Rousseau  did  not  follow  out  the  ideas  that 
lay  nearest  to  his  own:  that  only  love  ought  to 
constitute  marriage;  that  only  the  development 
of  the  woman's  personality  deepens  love.  Even 
Goethe,  who  after  Rousseau  carried  the  gleaming 
trail  farther,  by  showing  love  as  the  mysterious 
fateful  power  of  elective  affinity,  saw  the  happi- 
ness of  love  rather  in  the  directness  of  woman's 
nature  than  in  its  development.  The  French 
Revolution  drew  the  consequences  of  Rousseau's 
propositions  also  in  the  questions  of  love  and 
woman;  it  made  marriage  civil  and  divorce  free, 
but  it  did  not  give  to  woman  the  franchise ;  indeed, 
it  did  not  even  preserve  the  form  of  it  which  she 
had  previously  possessed.  All  the  spirits  influ- 
enced by  Rousseau  and  the  Revolution  have  since, 
in  literature  and  in  life,  followed  out  love's 
declaration  of  rights. 

In  the  nineteenth  century  as  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  it  was  women,  poets,  and  knights — the  last 
under  the  name  of  social  utopians — who  took  the 
lead  in  this.  In  Germany,  it  was  first  the  roman- 
tic school,  then  "Young  Germany, "  which  went 
foremost;  in  England,  Shelley,  Byron,  Browning, 


68  Love  and  Marriage 

and  a  number  of  other  thinkers;  in  Norway, 
Camilla  Collet  and  some  great  poets  among  the 
men.  In  France, — in  the  midst  of  the  reaction 
which  reintroduced  »indissoluble  marriage, — 
Madame  de  Stael  attacks  this  in  Delphine.  In 
the  country  of  literary  salons,  it  is  attempted  to 
prevent  woman's  genius  from  acting  as  a  social 
force — and  through  Corinne  and  Coppet,  Mme.  de 
Stael  makes  it  a  universal  force.  Her  confidence 
that  honour  for  a  woman  can  signify  only  a  means 
of  winning  love;  her  complaint  that  life  denies 
to  the  woman  of  genius  the  fulfilment  of  her  most 
beautiful  dream,  love  in  marriage,  were  the  pro- 
logue to  innumerable  tragedies  during  woman's 
century.  After  her,  came  the  followers  of  St. 
Simon  and  the  rest  of  the  social  revolutionaries, 
and  above  all  another  of  Rousseau's  spiritual 
daughters,  the  woman  in  whose  veins  all  the  blood 
was  mingled  which  the  Revolution  had  poured 
out  on  the  scaffold  and  on  the  battle-field :  blood 
of  the  mob,  blood  of  the  bourgeois,  noble  blood, 
royal  blood!  The  courage  of  her  nation  to 
follow  truth  to  its  utmost  consequences,  the 
fervent  faith  of  her  childhood,  the  wistfulness 
of  her  blood,  her  soul's  longing  for  eternity, 
the  volcanic  ardour  and  ashes  of  her  experiences — 
all  this  George  Sand  hurls  forth  in  her  indictment 
of  the  marriage  upheld  by  Church  and  State, 
which  to  her  was  "lawful  ravishing"  and  "pros- 
titution under  vows."  Long  before  her  time, 
the  rights  of  love  had  been  asserted  in  the  case 


The  Evolution  of  Love  69 

of  exceptional  natures.  George  Sand's  new  cour- 
age was  shown  in  demanding  this  right  for  all; 
in  branding  it  upon  the  conscience  of  her  time 
that,  when  two  human  beings  wish  to  be  together, 
no  bond  is  needed  to  hold  them  together;  that, 
when  they  do  not  wish  it,  to  hold  them  together 
by  force  is  a  violation  of  their  human  rights  and 
of  their  human  dignity. 

From  this  moment  the  battle  was  transferred 
from  Olympus  to  the  earth.  And  since  then  all 
"saviours  of  society"  have  sought  to  quench, 
and  all  "enemies  of  society"  have  striven  to 
spread,  its  flames. 

The  love  which  a  George  Sand  herself  sought 
in  vain  on  paths  from  which  she  returned  with 
feet  wounded,  and  sometimes  soiled;  the  love  a 
Rahel  Varnhagen  suffered  from  and  lived  on,  a 
Camilla  Collet  implored,  and  an  Elizabeth  Brown- 
ing realised — this  is  the  love  of  which  the  woman 
of  the  new  age  is  also  dreaming. 

George  Sand — like  the  followers  of  St,  Simon, 
and  like  the  modern  feminists — looked  upon 
freedom  in  love  as  the  central  point  in  the  wo- 
man's question.  Like  George  Sand,  the  feminism 
of  the  present  day  asserts  the  right  of  free  thought 
against  the  creed  of  authority  in  every  field; 
the  solidarity  of  mankind  and  the  cause  of  peace 
against  the  patriotism  of  militarism ;  social  reform 
against  the  existing  relations  of  society.  The 
American-English-Scandinavian  woman's  ques- 
tion— whose  supreme  confession  of  faith  is  still 


70  Lo  Ve  and  Marriage 

J.  S.  Mill's  book,  published  in  1854,  on  The  Suh^ 
jection  of  Women — has, on  the  other  hand,  over- 
looked to  a  great  extent  erotic,  religious,  and  social 
emancipation,  and  asserted  only  woman's  rights 
as  a  citizen.  Thus,  especially  in  Scandinavia, 
the  new  gospel  of  love  has  had  to  encounter  from 
the  leaders  of  emancipation,  now  indifference, 
now  resentment. 

Ridicule  and  resentment  from  men  have  also 
fallen  to  the  lot  of  the  women's  demand  for  a 
new  love.  With  arguments,  for  which  Schopen- 
hauer and  Hartmann  once  provided  the  philo- 
sophical formulas,  it  has  been  shown  that  soulful 
love  is  an  illusion  of  nature,  and  that  the  unity 
in  love,  which  woman  now  claims  of  man,  de- 
mands sacrifices  which  are  opposed  to  his  physio- 
logical and  psychological  nature. 

Undisturbed  by  ridicule  and  resentment,  how- 
ever, the  women  of  the  new  age  have  continued 
to  preach  the  love  of  their  dreams — which  is  also 
that  of  the  dreams  of  poets. 

For  thousands  of  years,  poetry  has  been  pic- 
turing love  as  a  mysterious  and  tragic  power. 
But  when  anyone  says  the  same  thing  in  plain 
prose,  and  adds  that  life  would  be  colourless  and 
poor  without  the  great  passions,  then  this  is 
called  immorality !  Century  after  century,  poetry 
sets  forth  the  loftiness  of  love.  But  if  anyone  in 
every-day  prose  ventures  to  say  that  love  may 
become  an  ever  loftier  emotion,  then  this  is 
called   extravagance;   for    it  does   not    occur  to 


The  Evolution  of  Love  71 

the  people  of  the  present  day  to  regard  poetry 
as  prophetic. 

The  new  love  is  still  the  natural  attraction  of 
man  and  woman  to  each  other  for  the  continuance 
of  the  race.  It  is  still  the  desire  of  the  active 
human  being  to  relieve  through  comradeship 
the  hardships  of  another  and  of  himself  at  the 
same  time.  But  above  this  eternal  nature  of 
love,  beyond  this  primeval  cause  of  marriage, 
another  longing  has  grown  with  increasing 
strength.  This  is  not  directed  towards  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  race.  It  has  sprung  from  man's 
sense  of  loneliness  within  his  race,  a  loneliness 
which  is  ever  greater  in  proportion  as  his  soul 
is  exceptional.  It  is  the  pining  for  that  human 
soul  which  is  to  release  our  own  from  this  torment 
of  solitude ;  a  torment  which  was  formerly  allayed 
by  repose  in  God,  but  which  now  seeks  its  rest 
with  an  equal,  with  a  soul  that  has  itself  lain 
wakeful  with  eyelids  heated  from  the  same  longing ; 
a  soul  empowered  by  love  to  the  miracle  of 
redeeming  our  soul — as  itself  by  ours  is  redeemed 
— from  the  sense  of  being  a  stranger  upon  earth ; 
a  soul  before  whose  warmth  our  own  lets  fall 
the  covering  that  the  world's  coldness  has  im- 
posed upon  it  and  shows  its  secrets  and  its  glories 
without  shame.  Richard  Dehmel  has  simimed 
this  up  in  two  immortal  lines : 

Liebe  ist  die  Freiheit  der  Gestalt 

V  om  Wahn  der  Welt,  vom  Bann  der  eignen  Seele. 


72  Love  and  Marriage 

The  same  feeling  has  possessed  many  a  man 
before  our  time.  One  of  them  was  Eugene 
Delacroix,  who  speaks  in  his  journal  of  the  pain 
of  only  being  able  to  show  to  each  of  his  friends 
the  aspect  of  himself  which  that  friend  understood, 
and  of  thus  being  obliged  to  become  another  for 
each  of  them,  without  ever  feeling  himself  com- 
pletely understood;  a  suffering  for  which  he  only 
knew  one  remedy,  une  épouse  qui  est  de  votre  force. 

But  what  is  new  about  it  is  that  this  sentiment 
has  become  diffused  and  has  taken  shape  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  many;  that  it  is  beginning 
to  set  its  stamp  upon  the  whole  spirit  of  the  age. 

Meanwhile,  mankind  continues  to  be  guided 
by  erotic  impulses  which  lie  deep  below  its  con- 
scious erotic  needs.  Man's  senses  are  spurred 
by  a  desire  which  thrusts  aside  that  of  the  soul. 
The  culture  of  the  idea  of  love  is  far  in  advance 
of  the  instincts  of  love.  And  thus  our  time  is 
brimful  of  love-conflicts. 

To  this  must  be  added  that  the  increased  sensi- 
bility of  modern  man  has  rendered  him  more  and 
more  inclined  to  wear  masks,  protective  dis- 
guises, artistically  decorated  armour.  Protection 
is  indispensable,  since  no  one  would  be  able  to 
endure  life  if  he  were  hourly  seeing  the  ill-bound 
or  still  open  wounds  of  others,  or  feeling  his  own 
touched  by  anyone.  Existence  would  lose  much 
of  its  excitement  without  secrets,  suspected  or 
unsuspected,  in  the  destinies  and  souls  of  men. 
But  at   the  same  time  this  protection  renders 


The  Evolution  of  Love  73 

love's  struggle  to  penetrate  appearances  more  and 
more  difficult.  Therefore  a  certain  form  of  ''flir- 
tation" serves  as  the  attempt  of  awakening 
love  to  tear  off  the  mask,  to  outwit  the  protective 
disguise,  a  game  of  fence  which  aims  at  the  joints 
of  the  tight-fitting  armour. 

But  the  attempts  are  often  unsuccessful  and 
life  is  more  and  more  crowded  with  destinies 
that  have  miscarried,  while  more  and  more 
people  wring  their  hands  in  solitude  over  what 
might  have  been!  Man  feels  more  deeply  than 
ever  before  that  life  gave  him  a  poor  portion,  when 
his  love  has  been  nothing  but  sinking  in  an 
embrace.  An  ever  greater  number  know  that 
love  is  absorption  into  that  spirit,  in  which  one's 
own  finds  its  foothold  without  losing  its  freedom; 
the  nearness  of  that  heart  which  stills  the  dis- 
quiet in  our  own;  that  attentive  ear  which 
catches  what  is  unspoken  and  unspeakable;  the 
clear  sight  of  those  eyes  which  see  the  realisation 
of  our  best  possibilities ;  the  touch  of  those  hands 
which,  dying,  we  would  feel  closed  on  our  own. 

'When  two  souls  have  joys  which  the  senses 
share,  and  when  the  senses  have  delights  which 
the  souls  ennoble,  then  the  result  is  neither  desire 
nor  friendship.  Both  have  been  absorbed  in  a 
new  feeling,  not  to  be  compared  with  either  taken 
by  itself,  just  as  the  air  is  incomparable  with  its 
component  elements.  Nitrogen  is  not  air,  nor 
is  oxygen;  sensuousness  is  not  love,  nor  is  sym- 
pathy.    In  combination  they  are  the  air  of  life 


74  Love  and  Marriage 

and  love.  If  either  of  the  component  elements 
is  in  the  wrong  proportion  to  the  other,  then  love — 
like  air — becomes  too  heavy  or  too  rarefied.  But 
as  the  proportions  between  oxygen  and  nitrogen 
may  within  a  wide  limit  vary  without  disadvantage, 
so  also  may  the  components  of  love.  Affinity 
of  soul  is  doubtless  the  most  enduring  element  in 
love,  but  not  therefore  the  only  valuable  one; 
the  love  that  fills  life  with  intoxication  is  separated 
from  even  the  most  lofty  friendship  by  an  ocean 
as  deep  as  that  which  divides  the  India  of  legend 
from  utilitarian  America — a  lifetime  in  which 
will  not  equal  a  single  day  in  the  other! 

Great  love  arises  only  when  desire  of  a  being 
of  the  other  sex  coalesces  with  the  longing  for  a 
soul  of  one's  own  kind.  It  is  like  fire,  the  hotter 
it  is,  the  purer;  and  differs  from  the  ardour  of 
desire  as  the  white  heat  of  a  smelting-furnace 
differs  from  the  ruddy,  smoking  flames  of  a  torch 
carried  along  the  streets. 


The  constantly  increased  importance  of  sym- 
pathy in  the  life  of  the  soul  finds  expression, 
however,  at  the  present  time  within  the  feminine 
world  in  an  over-estimation  of  friendship,  both 
between  one  woman  and  another  and  in  relation 
to  love.  A  passionate  worship  between  persons 
of  the  same  age — or  of  an  elder  by  a  younger 
member  of  the  same  sex — is  among  women  as 


The  Evolution  of  Love  75 

among  men  the  customary  and  beautiful  morning 
glow  of  love,  which  always  pales  after  sunrise. 
An  entirely  personal,  great  friendship  is,  on  the 
other  hand,  as  rare  as  a  great  love,  and  equally 
rare  among  women  as  among  men.  Those  who 
expect  to  find  the  complement  of  their  being  in 
friendship  have  therefore  no  greater  prospect  of 
attaining  the  essential  in  this  sphere,  and  more- 
over they  run  the  risk  of  missing  it  in  the  sphere 
of  love,  through  shutting  themselves  off  from  or 
impoverishing  themselves  of  love's  emotions. 
The  women  of  older  times  also  cultivated  friend- 
ship. But  they  did  not  content  themselves  with 
it  in  the  place  of  love.  And  if  women  were  once 
seriously  to  do  this,  then  winter  would  have  come 
upon  the  world.  The  way  of  evolution  is  to  de- 
mand of  love  all  that  friendship  affords — and 
infinitely  more!  But  the  rich  spiritual  inter- 
course between  female  fellow- workers  and  fellow- 
students,  as  also  between  comrades  of  different 
sexes,  is  now  preparing  the  third  historical  stage 
of  development,  that  of  individual  sympathy. 
It  is  true  that  great  love  has  been  individually 
sympathetic  in  all  ages.  What  is  new  is  that  an 
ever  greater  number  of  spirits  are  guided  by  the 
same  need ;  that  the  possibility  of  great  love  has 
become  apparent  to  many,  not  only  to  a  chosen 
few.  Just  as  we  have  been  able  to  gauge  the  re- 
vival of  love  by  the  diminution  of  marriages  of 
convenience,  by  the  recognition  of  young  people's 
liberty  of  choice,  and  by  the  popular  condemna- 


76  Love  and  Marriage 

tion  of  marriages  for  money,  so  can  we  now  meas- 
ure the  strength  of  the  new  revival  by  other, 
equally  significant  phenomena;  those,  namely, 
called  "the  new  immorality."  It  has  been  said 
with  truth  that  love  as  it  now  is  —  the  great 
psychological  reality  with  which  one  has  to 
reckon — in  its  present  complicated,  manifold, 
and  refined  condition,  is  the  result  of  all  the 
progress  of  human  activity:  of  the  victory  of  in- 
telligence and  sentiment  over  crude  force,  of  the 
transformation  in  the  relations  between  man  and 
woman  which  new  economic,  religious,  and  ethical 
ideas  have  brought  about ;  of  the  growing  desire 
for  inward  and  outward  beauty,  of  the  will  to 
ennoble  the  race,  and  other  causes.  But  among 
these  we  have  not  named  the  most  important,  that 
in  which  many  now  see  a  sign  of  degeneration, 
but  which  is  really  one  of  development,  the  cause 
on  which  rests  the  hope  of  the  final  abolition  of 
erotic  dualism:  the  conciliation  of  the  excessive 
opposition  of  sex. 

So  long  as  man  and  woman  are  so  divided  in 
their  erotic  needs  as  is  at  present  often  the  case, 
love  will  be  the  ''everlasting  conflict"  described 
by  those  poets  and  thinkers  who  see  only  the 
immediate  present,  without  faith  in  the  develop- 
ment of  love  or  mankind's  education  in  loving; 
for  in  the  midst  of  the  age  of  evolutionism  men 
neither  think  nor  feel  according  to  its  doctrines. 
To  him,  however,  who  does  so  feel,  nothing  is 
more   certain    than    that    "the   everlasting  con- 


The  Evolution  of  Love  77 

flict"  will  one  day  end  in  the  conclusion  of 
peace. 

The  sceptics  just  referred  to  smile  ambiguously 
at  the  mention  of  friendship  between  women, 
as  at  that  of  the  refinement  and  craving  for  sym- 
pathy in  woman's  love.  It  is  not  until  a  mistress 
or  a  wife,  misunderstood  in  the  depths  of  her 
being,  leaves  him,  that  such  a  man  discovers  that 
the  being  he  believed  himself  to  be  making 
entirely  happy,  has  not  even  had  her  senses 
satisfied — since  the  soul  received  nothing  from 
the  senses  and  gave  them  nothing. 

Those  men — for  the  rest  often  men  of  fine 
culture — of  whom  this  is  true,  are  generally  verging 
on  middle  age.  Among  men  comparatively  young, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  erotic  longing  is  often  as 
refined  and  craves  as  much  for  sympathy,  as 
with  women,  although  it  is  still  rare  for  the  man 
to  possess  that  balance  between  soul  and  senses 
which  his  equal  in  the  other  sex  has  attained. 
That  women  now  venture  to  acknowledge  that 
they  possess  erotic  senses,  while  men  are  beginning 
to  discover  erotically  that  they  have  souls ;  that 
woman  demands  feelings  in  a  man  and  he  ideas 
in  her — this  is  the  great  and  happy  sign  of  the 
times.  Sensitive  young  men  of  the  present  day 
suffer  perhaps  as  much  as  their  sisters  when 
loved  only  for  their  sex,  not  personally  and  on 
account  of  their  personality.  They  for  their 
part  love  just  that  womanly  individuality  for 
which  they  provide  freedom  of  movement,  instead 


78  Love  and  Marriage 

of — as  their  own  fathers  did — trying  to  assimilate 
it  to  their  own. 

On  the  highest  plane — as  on  the  lowest — the 
similarities  between  man's  love  and  woman's 
are  already  greater  than  the  dissimilarities;  and 
there  may  be  more  danger  to  love  in  the  growing 
likeness  between  the  sexes  than  in  continued 
unlikeness.  Man  becomes  a  human  being — and 
woman  likewise — at  the  cost  of  his  secondary 
sexual  characters.  There  are  already  some  who 
think  that  the  close  of  psychical  development 
will  present  the  same  phenomenon  as  the  beginning 
of  physical  development,  namely,  that  the  embryo 
at  a  certain  stage  is  neither  male  nor  female  but 
includes  both  possibilities! 

The  romanticists,  F.  Schlegel  in  particular,  lay 
stress  upon  the  distinction  that,  while  the  an- 
cients put  greatness  of  heart,  nobility  of  mind, 
and  strength  of  soul  above  the  purely  sexual 
qualities,  the  moderns  have  made  woman  one- 
sidedly  feminine  and  man  one-sidedly  masculine, 
and  assert  that  this  extreme  view  on  both  sides 
must  be  got  rid  of  in  order  to  arrive  at  morality, 
beauty,  and  harmony  in  sexual  relations ;  a  view 
which  was  also  that  of  Schleiermacher.  And  if  we 
will  see  a  deeper  meaning  in  the  tale  of  Aristopha- 
nes of  the  cloven  human  being,  it  will  be  the  same 
that  an  apocryphal  tradition  ascribes  to  Jesus, 
in  the  saying  that  ''the  kingdom  of  God  is  at 
hand  when  the  two  again  become  one."  That 
Plato  already  emphasises  the  sufferings  imposed 


The  Evolution  of  Love  79 

on  both  halves  of  the  being  by  the ''cleavage, '* 
is  evidence  of  the  commencement  of  development 
of  love;  for  this  development  has  progressed 
through  the  increasing  opposition  of  the  sexes, 
with  the  passion  and  the  pain  it  has  caused. 
Now  at  last  the  moment  has  arrived  when  the 
divided  sections  again  converge  towards  a  higher 
unity. 

In  reality,  this  desirable  conciliation  of  sexual 
opposition  is  proceeding  with  such  rapidity  that 
there  might  be  a  fear  of  its  becoming  a  danger 
to  love  in  a  near  future,  if  the  psychical  oppo- 
sition of  sex  were  not  always  dependent  finally 
on  the  physical,  and  if  the  modern  man  and  woman 
were  not  becoming  simultaneously  more  and 
more  individualised. 

And  it  is  in  this  circumstance  that  the  future 
possibilities  of  great  love  lie.  Individualisation 
is  already  so  powerful  that  a  thoughtful  person 
is  ever  more  inclined  to  check  himself  when  the 
abstract  expressions  "man"  and  "woman"  escape 
his  lips.  For  already  men  and  women  respectively 
differ  among  themselves  almost  as  much  as  the 
two  sexes  from  each  other.  And  as  a  compensa- 
tion for  the  enfeebling  through  conciliation  of 
universal  erotic  attraction,  we  have  the  charm 
of  individual  contrasts.  Love's  spiritual  longing 
— to  be  resolved  together  with  another  soul  into 
a  higher  harmony — will  not  be  enfeebled,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  will  be  enhanced  in  proportion  as 
this  contrast  is  more  personal. 


8o  Love  and  Marriage 

A.  Rodin — who  like  every  great  Frenchman 
understands  great  love — has  glorified  it  in  his 
statue  of  a  pair  of  lovers,  who  have  through  each 
other  become  more  perfect  beings  than  either 
could  have  been  alone.  Rodin  makes  the  man 
thoroughly  masculine,  the  woman  thoroughly 
feminine,  while  each  line  in  their  two  figures 
shows  primitive  force  ennobled  into  spiritual 
power,  and  love  as  the  consimimation  of  the  human 
man  and  the  human  woman. 

When  life  from  time  to  time  shows  us  this  proud 
and  beautiful  vision,  then  we  are  in  the  presence 
of  a  happiness  which  is  overpoweringly  great. 
For  as  an  economical  housewife  shuts  out  the 
sunlight,  so  life  often  lets  fall  the  curtain  of 
death  when  happiness  shines;  or  indeed  men 
kill  their  own  happiness  through  instincts  sur- 
viving from  a  lower  stage. 

Chief  of  these  is  that  instinct  which  makes  the 
force  of  primitive  animality  still  erotically  attrac- 
tive even  to  the  spiritually  sensitive  „  Men  and 
women  with  this  power  of  elementary  passion,  in- 
toxicate because  they  are  themselves  intoxicated, 
because,  without  being  checked  by  any  considera- 
tion or  held  back  by  the  soul,  they  give  themselves 
up  wholly  and  hotly  to  the  moment.  It  is  as  su- 
perficial a  psychology  to  say  that  Don  Juan's  repu- 
tation makes  him  irresistible  as  that  conquest 
of  Cleopatra  is  tempting  because  it  is  also  con- 
quest over  Ccesar.  No,  the  power  of  these  natures 
lies  in  their  undivided,  unscrupulous  will  to  use 


The  Evolution  of  Love  8i 

all  the  resources  of  their  being  to  attain  their 
end.  And  only  that  by  which  one's  whole  being 
is  held  at  the  moment  has  the  power  of  holding 
others.     Thus  the  question  is  answered 

Comment  fais-tu  les  grands  amours^ 
Petite  ligne  de  la  bouche? 

Soulful  people,  especially  women,  have  hitherto 
only  loved  partially.  But  when  sensuousness — 
in  alliance  with  the  mission  of  the  race — regains 
its  ancient  dignity,  then  the  power  of  giving 
erotic  rapture  will  not  be  the  monopoly  of  him 
who  is  inhuman  in  his  love.  The  wise  virgins' 
deadly  sin  against  love  is  that  they  disdained  to 
learn  of  the  foolish  ones  the  secret  of  fascination; 
that  they  would  know  none  of  the  thousand 
things  that  bind  a  man's  senses  or  lay  hold  on 
his  soul;  that  they  regarded  the  power  to  please 
as  equivalent  to  the  will  to  betray.  When  all 
women  who  can  love  are  also  able  to  make  good- 
ness fascinating  and  completeness  of  personality 
intoxicating,  then  Imogen  will  conquer  Cleopatra. 

As  yet  the  charming  ones  are  not  always  good, 
the  good  not  always  charming,  and  the  majority 
neither  good  nor  charming.  During  this  trans- 
ition between  an  old  and  a  new  womanliness 
it  is  natural  that  she  should  be  strongest  who 
unites  in  herself 

Eve,  Joconde,  et  Delila. 

From  observation  of  love's  realisation  in 
marriage — as  it  is  still  realised  in  the  majority 

Q 

:> 


82  Love  and  Marriage 

of  cases — young  women  have  been  more  and  more 
possessed  by  a  disinclination  to  wed.  They  wish 
for  the  love  of  their  dreams  or  none  at  all.  A 
lower  claim,  a  poorer  gift  of  love  has  for  them  no 
value  which  can  be  compared  with  their  free 
personal  life.  To  the  man  who  only  seeks  her 
lips  but  does  not  listen  to  the  words  from  them, 
who  longs  for  her  embrace  but  smiles  or  frowns 
when  she  reveals  the  nature  of  her  soul,  such  a 
woman  has  nothing  to  give.  Her  love  is  now 
filled  with  the  whole  nourishing  force  of  her 
human  nature,  replete  with  the  whole  sap  of  her 
woman's  nature,  and  she  desires  that  the  sacra- 
ment she  thus  dispenses  shall  be  received  with 
devotion. 

She  will  no  longer  be  captured  like  a  fortress 
or  hunted  like  a  quarry;  nor  will  she  like  a 
placid  lake  await  the  stream  that  seeks  its  way 
to  her  embrace.  A  stream  herself,  she  will  go 
her  own  way  to  meet  the  other  stream. 


We  live  in  a  period  of  spiritual  reformation 
of  immense  importance  in  the  history  of  the 
world.  Every  human  being  who  himself  has 
soul  is  being  more  and  more  penetrated  by  the 
sense  of  the  mysterious  effects  of  elective  affinities ; 
of  sympathetic  and  antipathetic  influences;  of 
subconscious  powers,  above  all  in  the  erotic 
sphere.     Sensations    of    the    erotically    daemonic 


The  Evolution  of  Love  83 

are  not  new.  But  they  were  formerly  condemned 
to  as  great  an  extent  as  they  are  now  recognised 
and  indeed  sometimes  assisted.  It  is  this  ex- 
quisite sensitiveness,  these  vibrating  nerves,  these 
changing  moods,  this  irrit abihty  of  sensation 
that  the  woman — Hke  the  man — of  the  present 
day  has  acquired  as  her  superiority,  her  gain 
through  culture,  her  right  of  precedence  before 
any  other  generation.  But  this  new  wealth 
involves  innumerable  new  conflicts.  The  senses 
go  their  own  way  and  are  attracted  where  the 
soul  is  estranged,  or  repelled  although  the  heart 
is  filled  with  tenderness.  Until  the  physiology 
and  psychology  of  loathing  are  understood,  we 
shall  not  have  gone  far  towards  the  solution  of 
the  erotic  problem.  Every  day — and  night — 
these  innumerable  influences,  conscious  or  un- 
conscious, are  at  work  transforming  the  feelings 
of  married  people  and  lovers.  And  although 
our  time  is  becoming  increasingly  conscious  of  this, 
it  does  not  yet  understand  either  how  to  counteract 
the  dangerous  or  encourage  the  favourable  in- 
fluence of  the  important  trifles  of  married  life. 

Only  the  foremost  of  women  with  a  genius  for 
love  have  arrived  at  that  degree  of  sensitiveness 
which  makes  it  impossible  for  them  to  give  or 
receive  anything  in  love  without  the  feeling 
which  one  of  Charlotte  Bronte's  women  expresses 
in  the  words:  You  fit  me  into  the  finest  fibre  of  my 
being. 

Every  developed  modern  woman  wishes  to  be 


84  Love  and  Marriage 

loved  not  en  male  but  en  artiste.  Only  a  man 
whom  she  feels  to  possess  an  artist's  joy  in  her, 
and  who  shows  this  joy  in  discreet  and  delicate 
contact  with  her  soul  as  with  her  body,  can  retain 
the  love  of  the  modern  woman.  She  will  belong 
only  to  a  man  who  longs  for  her  always,  even 
when  he  holds  her  in  his  arms.  And  when  such 
a  woman  exclaims:  ''You  desire  me,  but  you 
cannot  caress,  you  cannot  listen  ..."  then  that 
man  is  doomed. 

Modern  woman's  love  differs  from  that  of  older 
times  by,  amongst  other  things,  the  insatiability 
of  its  demand  for  completeness  and  perfection 
in  itself,  and  for  corresponding  completeness  and 
perfection  in  the  feeling  of  the  man. 

Our  soul  is  doubtless  often  deeper,  but  oc- 
casionally also  shallower,  than  our  conscious 
existence  and  will.  Therefore  it  may  happen 
that  the  new  love  in  all  its  force  exists  in  a  woman 
who  is  unconscious  of  her  own  erotic  greatness, 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  another,  who  desires 
it  with  all  her  will,  perhaps  may  lack  the  depth 
of  feeling,  the  instinctive  sureness  of  choice. 

The  women  of  the  present  day  learn  everything 
and  arrive  at  much,  even  at  the  finest  ideas  of 
love.  But,  full  of  insight  as  they  are  into  the 
ars  amandi,  have  modern  women  indeed  learned 
how  with  all  their  soul,  all  their  strength,  and  all 
their  mind  to  love?  Their  mothers  and  grand- 
mothers— on  a  much  lower  plane  of  conscious 
erotic  idealism — knew  of  only  one  object:  that 


The  Evolution  of  Love  85 

of  making  their  husbands  happy.  This  then 
meant  that  the  wife  ought  to  submit  to  everything 
and  ask  for  nothing;  to  serve  her  husband's  ends 
untiringly,  even  when  she  did  not  understand 
them,  and  to  receive  with  gratitude  any  crumbs 
of  his  personaHty  that  might  fall  to  her  from  the 
table  to  which  his  friends  were  bidden  to  feast. 
But  what  watchful  tenderness,  what  dignified 
desire  to  please,  what  fair  gladness  could  not  the 
finest  of  these  spiritually  ignored  women  develop ! 

The  new  man  lives  in  a  dream  of  the  new 
woman,  and  she,  in  a  dream  of  the  new  man.  But 
when  they  actually  find  one  another  it  frequently 
results  that  two  highly  developed  brains  together 
analyse  love,  or  that  two  worn-out  nervous  sys- 
tems fight  out  a  disintegrating  battle  over  love. 
The  whole  thing  usually  ends  in  each  of  them 
seeking  peace  with  some  surviving  incarnation  of 
the  old  Adam  and  the  eternal  Eve.  But  not  with 
a  clear  conscience ;  for  they  are  continually  aware 
that  they  were  intended  for  the  new  experience, 
although  their  powers  of  loving  were  small  while 
their  ideas  of  love  were  great. 

Not  until  the  spring  rain  of  the  new  ideas 
has  fallen  sufficiently  to  penetrate  the  roots  and 
rise  as  sap  in  the  tree  of  life,  will  a  greater  happi- 
ness grow  from  the  new  love,  which  is  not  to  be 
blamed  because  men  have  dreamed  it  greater 
than  they  themselves  are  at  present. 

Individualism  has  made  love  deeper  and  at 
the  same  time  increased  its  difficulties.     It  has 


86  Love  and  Marriage  ' 

called  forth  an  enhanced  consciousness  of  our 
own  nature,  our  own  moods;  it  has  created  new 
spiritual  conditions  and — as  already  pointed  out 
— set  in  vibration  innumerable  formerly  latent 
feelings  of  pleasure  and  aversion.  But  our  per- 
sonal irritable  sensitiveness  has  not  yet  been 
developed  to  the  point  of  a  corresponding  delicacy 
of  feeling  for  the  equally  sensitive  spiritual  life 
of  others.  The  capacity  for  giving  and  sacri- 
ficing has  not  grown  at  an  equal  pace  with  that 
of  accepting  and  demanding.  Of  love's  double 
heart-beat — the  finding  one's  self,  and  the  for- 
getting one's  self  in  another — the  first  is  now 
considerably  more  advanced  than  the  second. 
Not  until  those  women  who  are  absorbed  in 
self-analysis  combine  their  own  personal  store 
of  life's  riches,  their  individual  diversity,  their 
unique  spirituality  with  the  sunny,  healthy 
peace,  the  self-sacrificing  devotion  of  older  times, 
will  their  new  development  render  them  more 
powerful  than  the  women  who  preceded  them. 
It  is  a  healthy  sign  that  men  and  women  exchange 
experiences  and  ideas  on  these  subjects  with  a 
frankness  that  was  never  known  before ;  that  they 
are  much  less  affected  before  marriage,  as  women 
indeed  have  ceased  to  be  so  after  marriage.  There 
was  a  heroic  kind  of  affectation,  of  which  Mrs. 
Carlyle  was  the  typical  example,  but  in  itself 
it  was  borrowed  from  man's  ethical  development. 
Nevertheless  one  would  often  wish  that  the 
young  wives  of  the  present  day  possessed  more 


The  Evolution  of  Love  87 

of  the  old-fashioned  gift  of  conceding  the  desires 
of  the  beloved  with  a  happy  smile,  instead  of 
insisting  on  their  own.  The  modern  woman  will 
not  feign  anything  for  the  sake  of  occasional 
peace  or  understanding.  And  she  is  right — 
when  anything  of  real  importance  in  the  domain 
of  ideas  or  will  is  at  stake ;  she  is  doubly  right  in 
holding  that  all  the  lies  and  ruses  which  married 
**  happiness  "  enforced  on  the  wives  of  an  older  time 
were  degrading  to  both  parties;  that  what  was 
thus  gained  was  no  real  gain.  Nothing  is  more 
true  than  that  the  souls  which  are  parted 
by  a  lack  of  perfect  frankness  never  belonged  to 
one  another;  that  complete  mutual  confidence 
is  the  true  sign  of  union.  Nothing  could  be 
wiser  than  the  modern  woman's  desire  to  see  life 
with  her  own  eyes,  not — as  was  the  case  with 
the  women  who  went  before  her — only  with  those 
of  a  husband.  But  has  she  also  retained  the 
power  of  seeing  everything  with  the  thought  of 
what  the  loved  one's  eyes  will  find  in  it.f* 


Upon  the  answer  to  these  questions  of  con- 
science will  depend  the  success  of  the  new  woman 
in  guiding  the  development  of  love  in  the  direc- 
tion of  her  will.  For  only  by  herself  loving  better 
will  she  gradually  humanise  man's  passion  and 
liberate  it  from  the  blind  force  of  the  blood,  which 
makes  of  the  capercailzie's  play  or  the  rivalry  of 


88  Love  and  Marriage 

stags  a  spectacle  beautiful  in  its  animality,  but^ 
on  the  other  hand,  renders  man's  love  bestial. 
Those  who  think  that  the  healthy  strength  of 
nature  will  be  thereby  enfeebled  are  as  foolish 
as  those  who  try  to  prove  that  the  artistic  instinct 
in  the  woodcock's  note  is  healthier  and  stronger 
than  that  which  created  Beethoven's  symphonies. 

But  it  is  not  sufficient  that  woman  should 
take  the  lead  and  appoint  the  goal.  She  must 
herself  be  developed  for  the  task,  and  that  not 
only  in  the  direction  just  mentioned.  Her  soul 
is  as  yet  no  sure  guide  to  her  senses,  nor  her  senses 
to  her  soul.  So  much  the  less  can  she  then  be  a 
guide  to  man's  soul  or  senses,  which  moreover 
she  frequently  fails  to  understand  and  therefore 
unhesitatingly  condemns — for  the  sins  to  which 
she  herself  has  not  unfrequently  seduced  him! 

The  new  woman  demands  purity  of  man. 
But  has  she  any  suspicion  as  to  how  her  treatment, 
on  the  one  hand,  of  the  awkward  and  uncertain 
youth,  on  the  other,  of  the  experienced  and  con- 
fident "lady-killer"  type,  acts  upon  the  former, 
who  is  perhaps  striving  after  erotic  purity  in  the 
hope  of  being  rewarded  by  the  happy  smile  of 
a  woman,  but  who  sees  that  woman  treat  him  with 
haughty  commiseration  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
she  regards  the  leopard's  spots  of  his  rival 
with  admiration?  One  may  ask  whether  all 
young  women  who  now  express  their  detestation 
of  the  impurity  in  man's  sexual  habits  are  them- 
selves guided  only  by  a  soft  and  noble  joy  in  giving 


The  Evolution  of  Love  89 

pleasure.  Do  they  never  permit  themselves  the 
most  despicable  of  hypocrisies,  that  of  love? 

So  long  as  ''pure"  women  take  pleasure  in 
the  cruel  sport  of  the  cat;  so  long  as  with  the 
facile  changes  of  mood  of  the  serpentine  dancer 
they  evade  the  responsibilities  of  their  flirtations ; 
so  long  as  they  delight  in  provoking  jealousy  as 
a  homage  to  themselves,  so  long  will  they  be 
helping  to  brew  the  hell-broth  around  which  men 
will  celebrate  the  witches'  sabbath  in  the  com- 
pany of  the  bat-winged  bevies  of  the  night. 

There  are  more  men  led  astray  by  ''pure"  than 
by  "impure"  women. 

And  not  even  those  women  who  are  pure  in  the 
true  sense  of  the  word  are  free  from  blame  in 
this.  Woman — for  whom  love  is  a  life-and-death 
matter  in  a  much  deeper  sense  than  for  man — 
experiences  on  the  approach  of  love  those  trem- 
blings that  follow  a  sunrise  for  which  one  has 
lain  awake  and  waited.  Her  physico-psychical 
timidity  takes  on  by  turns  the  expressions,  in- 
comprehensible to  the  man  who  loves,  of  dumb 
avoidance,  of  abrupt  change,  of  empty  girlish 
giggling,  of  sullen  misunderstanding.  And  all 
that  is  contradictory — not  that  which  is  mysterious 
— in  woman  stirs  the  unrest  in  a  man's  blood. 


The  modem  woman's  great  distress  has  been 
the  discovery  of  the  dissimilarity  between  her 


90  Love  and  Marriage  ' 

own  erotic  nature  and  that  of  man;  or  rather, 
she  has  refused  and  still  refuses  to  make  this 
discovery  and  thinks  that  only  the  custom  of 
society — with  its  wholesome  severity  towards  her, 
its  reckless  leniency  towards  him — has  brought 
about  the  difference  which  exists  and  which  she 
would  abolish.  But  while  one  group  proposes 
to  do  so  by  demanding  feminine  chastity  of  the 
man,  the  other  would  claim  masculine  freedom 
for  the  woman. 

The  book  world  is  now  full  of  works  on  purity, 
written  by  men  as  well  as  women,  of  literary 
tone  and  otherwise.  Now  it  is  the  story  of  a 
woman  who  breaks  with  the  man  she  loves  when 
he  confesses  his  past ;  now  that  of  a  woman  who 
forces  her  lover  to  marry  another  because  the 
latter  has  borne  him  a  child;  and  so  on  to  infinity. 
Finally  there  is  one  who  takes  her  life  from  grief 
over  her  husband's  past,  which  she  thinks  will 
ruin  their  future.  Literature  is  the  roll  of  the 
drum  which  announces  the  approach  of  the  troop 
— that  army  of  strong  women  who  are  to  educate 
men  to  chastity  by  denying  them  their  love. 

But  will  it  really  be  the  Amazons  who  will  play 
the  leading  part  in  the  struggle  against  man's 
erotic  dualism?  Will  not  perhaps  wisdom  be 
found  also  in  this  case  in  the  hope  of  being  able 
to  conquer  the  evil  with  the  good,  not  the  evil 
with  the  worse,  by  allowing  a  man  awakened  by 
love  to  the  desire  of  unity  to  turn  again  to  dis- 
union? 


The  Evolution  of  Love  91 

Would  not  woman  accomplish  more  in  the 
renovation  of  morals  if  she  stayed  with  the  man 
she  loves,  so  as  with  her  whole  being  to  let  him 
learn  how  a  woman  can  suffer  and  be  made  happy 
through  a  man?  The  means  of  salvation  for 
men  suffering  under  erotic  dualism  may  well 
be  an  increase  of  tenderly  chaste,  delicately  feeling, 
and  kindly  wise  wives.  Even  such  a  mother,  sister, 
or  friend  is  a  strength  to  a  man.  But  only  the  wife 
who  remains  a  mistress  can  be  sure  of  victory. 

It  is  true  that  she  cannot  efface  her  husband's 
past.  But  she  can  create  together  with  him  a 
new  and  stronger  generation.  The  man  who 
knows  what  his  beloved  has  suffered  through 
his  past ;  who  has  seen  the  wings  of  her  courage 
lose  something  of  their  power,  her  confidence  some- 
thing of  its  smile,  her  joy  something  of  its  play- 
fulness— he  will  in  time  teach  his  sons  that  a 
man  may  certainly  become  once  more  strong 
and  healthy  through  happiness  in  love,  but  that 
he  cannot  win  so  beautiful  and  sure  a  happiness 
as  self-control  can  prepare ;  such  queenly  pride  as 
his  victory  might  have  given  the  loved  one,  he 
will  never  see  in  her.  But  if  woman  is  to  help 
man's  struggle  for  purity,  she  must  for  her  share 
take  another  view  of  what  has  been  degrading 
to  man's  nature  and  what  has  not. 

A  woman  who  marries  a  widower  has  to  go 
through  a  pain  which  will  be  deep  in  proportion 
as  her  love  is  personal.  She  will  then  wish  to 
be  not  only  her  husband's  last,  but  also  his  first 


92  Love  and  Marriage 

love ;  she  suffers  from  all  the  memories  they  have 
not  in  common.  She  would  fain  have  sat  by  his 
cradle  and  received  his  first  smile;  she  longs  to 
have  played  with  him  as  a  sister,  to  have  shared 
as  a  friend  his  troubles  and  his  joys.  She  envies 
all  who  have  been  able  to  see  him  at  those  stages 
of  his  life  and  in  those  spiritual  conditions  that 
she  has  not  seen.  Above  all  she  envies  the 
woman  who  first  saw  him  made  happy  by  the 
love  she  gave  him. 

But  all  these  sufferings  do  not  bring  her  to  re- 
gard the  beloved  as  morally  sunken,  because 
before  her  he  has  been  the  husband  of  another 
woman.  And  the  same  must  hold  good  of  earlier 
relations  of  love.  The  man  may  have  developed, 
through  a  former  marriage  or  free  connection,  his 
powers  of  giving  a  personal  love,  or  he  may,  in 
the  same  way,  have  lost  them.  If  no  baseness  is 
connected  with  these  earlier  experiences,  if  he  has 
not  degraded  himself  to  voluntary  division  of  his 
erotic  nature — and  bought  love  is  always  such  a 
degradation — or  to  contemptible  duplicity;  if  he 
has  not  treated  any  woman  as  a  means,  but  re- 
ceived and  given  personality,  then  he  does  not 
enter  "impure"  into  his  marriage,  even  if  he 
has  not  evidence  of  abstinence. 

At  present  it  is  unfortunately  often  the  case  that 
men  enter  into  marriage  with  deep  stains  from 
earlier  connections,  and  it  is  this  circumstance 
that  gives  the  demand  for  purity  its  general 
applicability. 


The  Evolution  of  Love  93 

During  each  new  phase  of  the  development 
of  love  women,  probably  earlier  and  certainly 
more  consciously  than  men,  have  connected 
the  demand  for  unity  with  the  idea  of  love.  The 
sense  of  unity  is  quite  another  and  a  far  later 
phenomenon  than  monogamy.  The  enforced  fi- 
delity in  monogamy,  the  voluntary  fidelity  in 
love,  gave  rise  in  woman  first  to  control  of  desire, 
then  to  the  weakening  of  desire  through  control. 
Thus  by  degrees  erotic  unity  became  with  many 
women  an  organic  condition,  or,  as  is  significantly 
said,  a  physical  necessity.  Not  with  all,  not 
even  with  the  majority,  but  still  sufficiently 
frequently  to  enable  us  to  call  the  unity  of  soul 
and  senses  in  love — as  also  a  lifelong  fidelity  in 
a  single  love — the  provision  of  nature  for  in- 
numerable women,  while  with  men  both  are  still 
exceptions  so  rarely  to  be  met  with  that  they  are 
often  called  unnatural.  But  he  who  concludes 
from  this  that  one  has  only  to  demand  the  same 
of  men  for  the  effect  to  be  the  same,  is  attributing 
the  same  effect  to  two  different  causes.  For  the 
erotic  conditions  of  man  and  woman  are  and  will 
remain  different  causes.  The  purity  which  a  man 
is  capable  of  attaining  must  always,  therefore, 
to  a  certain  degree  be  different  from  a  woman's, 
but  not  on  that  account  of  less  worth.  He  will 
certainly  remain  more  polygamous  than  she, 
but  this  does  not  involve  a  division  of  himself  in 
the  satisfaction  of  his  erotic  needs.  Love  pos- 
sesses,   nay,    besets,    dominates,  and  determines 


94  Love  and  Marriage 

woman's  whole  being  in  an  entirely  different 
way  from  man's.  He  is  more  strongly  possessed 
at  rapidly  passing  moments,  by  the  erotic  emotion, 
but  at  the  same  time  he  liberates  himself  more 
quickly  and  completely.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
the  degree  in  which  a  woman  is  womanly,  is  she 
completely  determined  by  love.  This  gives  a 
unity,  completeness,  and  equilibrium  to  her 
sensuousness  which  man  lacks.  When  he  is 
warm,  he  often  believes  woman  is  cool ;  when  he 
sees  her  warm,  he  thinks  that  she  is  so  in  the 
same  way  as  himself.  Women  are  undoubtedly 
to  be  found,  shifting,  like  men,  between  sudden 
ardour  and  abrupt  chill,  and  these  women  are 
ever  the  most  exciting  erotically.  With  the 
majority  of  women,  however,  love  is,  for  the 
reasons  already  given,  a  constant  warmth,  a 
never-quenched  fervour.  But  this  makes  the 
woman  suffer  through  the  man,  who  in  the  inter- 
vals of  his  passion  is  so  much  more  tranquil  than 
she,  so  little  capable  of  her  unremitting  tenderness. 
Therefore  she  seldom  finds  herself  occupying  his 
thoughts  and  feelings  so  completely  as  he  occupies 
hers. 

A  woman  has  aptly  said  that  *'it  is  precisely 
woman's  greater  sensuousness  that  makes  her 
less  sensuous  than  man :  on  account  of  motherhood 
— and  all  that  it  implies — she  is  sensuous,  so  to 
speak,  from  head  to  foot  and  chronically,  while 
man  is  so  only  acutely  and  locally."  If  one 
transfers  one's  thoughts  from  erotics*  to  mother- 


The  Evolution  of  Love  95 

hood,  the  truth  of  this  will  at  once  be  clear :  the 
feeHng  of  motherhood  is  the  most  thoroughly 
sensuous  and  therefore  the  most  thoroughly 
soulful  of  emotions;  the  same  transport  of  the 
senses  in  which  the  mother  exclaims  that  she 
could  "eat"  her  child,  expresses  itself  in  the  affec- 
tion which  would  prompt  her  to  die  for  it.  But  the 
author  just  quoted  goes  on  to  consider  that  even 
with  men  the  erotic  emotions  could  be  transposed 
or  released  in  many  ways  besides  the  one  which 
to  most  of  them  still  represents  the  whole  ex- 
pression of  "love."  What  Rousseau  revealed 
to  his  unbelieving  contemporaries  will  perhaps 
one  day  become  true  in  a  psycho-physical  sense : 
that  a  look  may  fill  a  lover  with  voluptuousness ; 
that  the  great  emotions  are  the  chief  conditions 
of  love's  happiness;  that  the  lightest  touch  of 
the  loved  one's  hand  gives  greater  bliss  than  the 
possession  of  the  most  beautiful  women  without 
love — feelings  which  all  great  lovers  in  all  times 
have  confirmed,  and  as  to  which  even  the  most 
contrary  natures  give  the  same  testimony.  The 
peasant's  love,  which  knows  nothing  of  caresses, 
comes  lower  in  the  scale  of  happiness  than  that 
of  the  cultivated  person,  who  finds  in  love  all  the 
refined  delights  of  the  senses;  and  this  again 
is  far  below  the  happiness  of  those  who  even 
in  the  encounter  of  two  ideas  or  two  moods  can 
experience  all  the  transport  of  love. 

The  conviction  that  sensuousness  can  only  be 
controlled    through    being    spiritualised   is  what 


96  Love  and  Marriage 

directs  those  women  who  are  now  hoping  to 
convert  men,  not  to  the  duty  of  monogamy,  but 
to  the  joy  of  unity. 

Before  woman's  will  could  thus  become  con- 
scious, her  long  struggle  for  liberation  had  to 
take  place.  Marriage  had  to  cease  to  be  a  trade 
among  the  upper  classes,  as  prostitution  still  is 
among  the  hungry  lower  classes.  Love  must 
have  become  free  at  least  in  the  sense  that  a 
woman  had  no  choice  but  charity  from  her  family 
or  forced  sale  to  her  husband;  her  personality 
must  have  attained  consideration,  not  only  for 
her  value  as  a  woman  and  dignity  as  a  human 
being,  but  also  individually.  Not  until — by  her 
own  labour  and  activity — she  no  longer  exclu- 
sively depended  on  a  man's  courtship  for  both 
her  livelihood  and  her  life's  destiny,  did  woman's 
salvation  come  to  be,  not  ''that  the  man  wills" 
(Nietzsche),  but  that  she  herself  can  exercise 
her  will.  Language  already  reflects  the  change 
of  custom.  We  seldom  hear  it  asked  nowadays 
of  a  woman :  Why  has  she  not  married  ?  but  it  is 
all  the  more  frequently  enquired :  What  has  her 
love-story  been,  since  she  has  never  married? 

Here  also  the  line  of  development  is  a  zigzag. 
Women  sometimes  act  as  though  their  whole 
liberation  was  of  no  avail.  But  in  spite  of  much 
that  is  contradictory,  the  evolution  of  love — above 
all  through  the  new  woman's  claims  of  love — 
is  to  him  who  stands  high  enough  to  have  a  full 
view  of  the  situation,  the  most  certain  of  realities. 


The  Evolution  of  Love  97 

Evidence  of  this  evolution  can  be  found  in 
life  as  well  as  in  literature,  where  it  now  takes 
every  kind  of  form,  from  experiences  translated 
into  genuine  poetry  down  to  the  productions 
which  tempt  one  to  think  that  these  people  have 
only  loved  to  get  "copy"  for  a  book.  The  femi- 
nine fiction  of  the  present  day  reminds  one  of  a 
relief  on  a  sacrificial  altar  in  the  Roman  Forum, 
where  the  ox,  the  sheep,  and  the  pig  proceed  in 
file  to  meet  the  knife.  Hecatombs  of  these  ani- 
mals— in  the  likeness  of  husbands  or  lovers — 
are  now  sacrificed  to  Eros  by  the  new  woman. 
It  may  not  be  very  long  before  the  vow  of  fidelity 
is  exchanged  for  an  oath  of  silence  and  the  mar- 
riage contract  contains  a  provision  that  in  case 
of  a  rupture  love-letters  are  not  to  be  used  as 
literature. 

No  doubt  it  will  ever  remain  true  that  a  living 
book  on  love  is  never  written  with  other  ink 
than  blood.  But  such  books  are  not  those  which 
resemble  a  trial  in  which  the  prosecutor,  witness, 
judge,  and  executioner  are  united  in  one  person. 

Bilt  whether  powerful  or  weak,  discreet  or 
audacious,  noble  or  ignoble — the  new  woman's 
books  are  always  instructive  to  those  who  seek 
to  follow  the  course  of  love's  evolution. 


The   great    danger   to   this  evolution   is   that 
women  never  take  sufficient  account  of  sensuous- 


98  Love  and  Marriage 

ness,  nor  men  of  spirituality.  And  it  is  especially 
woman  who  now  onesidedly  applies  her  own 
erotic  nature — with  its  warm  penetration,  its 
completeness  that  frees  it  from  temptation — as 
the  ethical  and  erotic  standard  for  that  of 
man  with  its  sudden  heat,  its  dangerous  incom- 
pleteness. 

It  is  without  doubt  a  feminine  exaggeration 
to  say  that  a  "pure"  woman  only  feels  the  force 
of  her  sex's  need  when  she  loves.  But  the  enor- 
mous difference  between  her  and  man  is  that  she 
cannot  obey  this  need  without  loving.  It  is 
doubtless  true  that  besides  her  love  a  woman 
may  have  a  calling  in  life.  But  the  profound 
distinction  between  her  and  man  is  at  present 
this:  that  he  more  often  gives  of  his  best  as  a 
creator  than  as  a  lover — while  for  her  the  reverse 
is  nearly  always  the  case.  And  while  thus  man 
is  appraised  by  himself  and  others  according  to 
his  work,  woman  in  her  heart  values  herself — 
and  wishes  to  be  valued — according  to  her  love. 
Not  until  this  is  fully  appreciated  and  working 
for  happiness  does  she  feel  her  own  worth.  It  is 
no  doubt  true  that  woman  also  wishes  to  be  made 
happy  by  man  through  her  senses.  But  while 
this  longing  in  her  not  unfrequently  awakes  long 
after  she  already  loves  a  man  so  that  she  could 
give  her  life  for  him,  with  man  the  desire  to 
possess  a  woman  often  awakes  before  he  even 
loves  her  enough  to  give  his  little  finger  for  her. 
That  with  women  love  usually  proceeds  from  the 


The  Evolution  of  Love  99 

soul  to  the  senses  and  sometimes  does  not  reach 
so  far;  that  with  man  it  usually  proceeds  from 
the  senses  to  the  soul  and  sometimes  never  com- 
pletes the  journey — this  is  for  both  the  most 
painful  of  the  existing  distinctions  between  man 
and  woman.  It  is  quite  certain  that  both  man 
and  woman  are  humbled  by  their  great  love,  and 
that  the  knowledge  of  having  awakened  reciprocal 
love  turns  even  the  freethinker  into  a  believer 
in  miracles.  But  man  often  conceals  his  himiility 
behind  a  security  which  wounds  the  woman ;  she, 
on  the  other  hand,  hides  hers  in  an  uncertainty 
which  wounds  the  man.  And  from  this  difference 
of  instinct  arises  a  new  kind  of  complication, 
when  man  also  has  begun  to  desire  an  unspoken 
understanding  on  the  part  of  woman;  when  he 
becomes  convinced  of  her  love  only  when  she  has 
guessed  this  and  loved  his  reticence  itself.  But 
against  this  conscious  and  refined  will  of  the 
modern  man  stands  his  hereditary  instinct  of  a 
conqueror.  And  no  woman  is  more  sure  of  all 
the  older  as  well  as  all  the  newer  sufferings  of 
love  than  she  who  really  acts  according  to  the 
words  of  her  lover :  that  he  will  accept  love  only 
from  a  woman  who  herself  has  the  courage  to 
declare  it  to  him.  For,  on  the  other  side,  the 
primitive  desire  of  being  captured  survives  in 
woman.  And  therefore  also  her  strongest  in- 
stincts come  into  conflict  with  her  newly  acquired 
courage  in  action. 

For  all  these  reasons  it  is  difficult  for  a  person 


100  Love  and  Marriage 

of  the  present  day  to  believe  himself  loved  or 
to  know  that  he  is  loved. 

And  it  is  this  which  will  preserve  to  love  its 
excitement,  even  when  the  animal  habits — with 
pursuit  on  one  side  and  flight  on  the  other — have 
gradually  ceased.  Conflict  and  the  intoxication 
of  victory  will  always  form  a  part  of  the  vital 
stimulation  and  pleasurable  emotion  of  love, — 
but  they  will  be  removed  to  a  higher  plane, 
Man's  forward  rush  to  win  a  woman  who  perhaps 
would  not  otherwise  have  remarked  him;  woman's 
turning  aside  to  egg  the  man  on,  or  else  to  defend 
in  some  measure  the  independent  decision  of  her 
feelings,  will  be  transformed  by  the  desire  of  each 
to  wait  until  the  other  has  chosen.  The  erotic 
tension  will  then  be  released  in  the  contest  for 
the  most  refined  expressions  of  sympathy,  the 
most  convincing  assurances  of  comprehension, 
the  most  rapidly  vibrating  sensitiveness  to  the 
other's  moods,  the  fullest  communication  of 
confidence.  Victory  will  mean  a  constantly  deeper 
penetration  into  the  other's  nature,  an  ever  richer 
fulness  and  joy  in  the  communication  of  one's 
own;  a  constantly  growing  faith  as  regards  what 
is  mysterious,  and  a  like  gratitude  for  what  is 
revealed.  The  stimulation  will  be  renewed  daily 
in  moods  the  transitions  of  which  are  as  im- 
perceptible as  those  of  the  evening  sky  from  the 
reddest  gold  to  the  purest  white ;  in  the  border 
lines  of  sympathy  and  antipathy,  now  fine  as  a 
straw,  now  broad  as  a  river.     It  will  be  renewed 


The  Evolution  of  Love  loi 

through  the  test  of  innumerable  uniting  and  re- 
pellent emotions,  as  rapidly  and  irrevocably 
decisive  as  the  fall  of  a  star  in  space,  or  of  a  silver 
piece  in  the  river. 

And  this  tension  of  married  life  will  not  be 
relaxed  as  now  by  the  puffed-up  arrogance  of 
proprietorship  on  the  part  of  the  man  or  by  dull 
complaisance  on  that  of  the  woman.  Since  all 
sense  of  happiness  is  connected  with  the  exertion 
of  force  to  attain  an  end  and  with  the  equilibrium 
that  results  from  its  attainment,  it  has  been  the 
misfortune  of  love  that  courtship  has  absorbed 
all  the  tension,  and  married  life  the  subsequent 
equilibrium.  Only  the  sense  of  impending  loss — ■ 
through  life  or  through  death — has,  as  a  rule, 
evoked  a  new  spiritual  tension.  This,  for  reasons 
mentioned  above,  has  especially  concerned  the 
husband.  Wives  have  often  suffered  long  from 
the  self-satisfied  comfort  of  the  daily  life  of 
marriage  before  they  have  resigned  the  peace  of 
consum.mation,  the  equilibrium  without  move- 
ment, which  was  their  dream  of  happiness. 

But  now  women  will  no  longer  resign,  nor 
allow  themselves  to  be  cheated  of  life.  More 
and  more  their  demand  for  a  new  love  becomes 
one  with  the  demand  for  a  new  marriage,  the 
chief  value  of  which  will  not,  as  now,  consist 
in  *' security  and  calm." 

Woman  knows — and  man  still  more — that  it  is 
in  periods  of  calm,  when  all  vital  stimulation  is 
wanting,  that  the  temptation  comes  to  seek  it  in 


102^^  Love  and  Marriage 

new  relations.  But  at  the  same  time  they  are 
beginning  to  see  that  when  one  and  the  same 
feeUng  affords  an  unceasing  excitement — through 
the  desire  of  constantly  attaining  higher  conditions 
of  that  feeling  —  then  such  temptation  becomes 
of  necessity  less  and  less  dangerous,  simply  be- 
cause the  himian  soul  can  only  with  great  difficulty 
transfer  the  spiritual  wealth  it  has  accumulated  in 
one  place.  Love  in  its  impersonal  form  is  mova- 
ble capital,  easily  realised.  In  its  personal  form, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  fixed  property,  which  in- 
creases in  value  the  more  one  sinks  in  it,  and  which, 
owing  to  its  very  nature,  is  difficult  to  disperse. 

Whenever  a  woman  has  captivated  a  man  with 
a  lifelong  fascination,  the  secret  has  been  that 
he  has  never  exhausted  her;  that  she  "has  not 
been  one,  but  a  thousand"  (G.  Heiberg);  not  a 
more  or  less  beautiful  variation  on  the  eternal 
theme  of  the  female  sex,  but  a  music  in  which 
he  has  found  the  wealth  of  inexhaustibility,  the 
enticement  of  impenetrability,  while  she  has 
given  him  an  incomparable  happiness  of  the 
senses.  The  more  the  modern  woman  acquires 
courage  for  a  love  as  rich  in  the  senses  as  in  the 
soul,  the  more  complicated  and  self -inclosed  her 
personality  becomes,  the  more  will  she  obtain 
that  power  which  is  now  only  the  fortunate  ad- 
vantage of  the  exceptional. 

Man  tells  woman  that  her  new  way  of  love 
is  opposed  not  only  to  man's  nature  but  to  the 
welfare  of  the  new  generation. 


The  Evolution  of  Love  103 

She  answers  that  great  love  doubtless  betrays 
a  childish  lack  of  tinderstanding  in  all  departments 
of  worldly  wisdom,  but  that  in  its  own  sphere — 
with  all  its  riddles  and  problems — it  is  godlike 
wisdom,  the  gift  of  divining,  the  power  of  working 
miracles;  that  the  only  thing  needful  in  order 
that  love  may  re-create  the  race  is  that  it  shall 
become  an  even  greater  vital  force,  through  man- 
kind investing  it  with  more  and  more  of  its 
spiritual  power. 


Even  at  the  present  day  couples  are  to  be 
found  who  are  inspired  by  great  love.  They  show 
an  insatiable  desire  for  all  the  riches  of  life,  so 
as  to  have  the  means  of  being  regally  lavish 
towards  each  other.  Neither  defrauds  the  other 
of  so  much  as  a  dewdrop.  The  fervour  they 
give  one  another,  the  freedom  they  possess 
through  one  another,  make  the  space  that  sur- 
rounds them  warm  and  ample.  Love  is  constantly 
giving  them  new  impulses,  new  powers  and  new 
employment  for  their  powers,  whether  these  are 
directed  inwards  to  home  life  or  outwards  to  that 
of  society.  And  thus  the  happiness,  which  for 
themselves  is  the  source  of  life,  becomes  also  a 
tributary  stream  by  which  the  happiness  of  all 
is  raised.  The  power  of  great  love  to  enhance 
a  person's  value  for  mankind  can  only  be  com- 
pared with  the  glow  of  religious  faith  or  the  crea- 


104  Love  and  Marriage 

tive  joy  of  genius,  but  surpasses  both  in  universal 
life-enhancing  properties.  Sorrow  may  sometimes 
make  a  person  more  tender  towards  the  sufferings 
of  others,  more  actively  benevolent  than  happi- 
ness with  its  concentration  upon  self.  But  sorrow 
never  led  the  soul  to  those  heights  and  depths, 
to  those  inspirations  and  revelations  of  universal 
life,  to  that  kneeling  gratitude  before  the  mystery 
of  life,  to  which  the  piety  of  great  love  leads  it. 

Like  faith,  this  piety  sanctifies  all  things.  It 
gives  significance  to  attention  bestowed  on  one's 
self,  since 

.     .    .    If  I  am  dear  to  some  one  else 
Then  must  I  he  to  myself  more  dear. 

It  combines  the  most  trifling  things  of  life 
into  an  intelligent  whole.  He  who  is  loved  and 
loves  in  this  v/ay  bears  the  same  stamp  as  the 
Christian  mystic,  who  grows  ever  clearer  and 
yet  more  rich  in  mystery;  ever  fuller  of  life  and 
yet  calmer;  ever  more  introspective  and  yet 
more  radiant. 

There  are  some  who  think  that  this  state  is 
visionary  and  unnatural. 

But  the  truth — for  everyone  who  has  .beheld 
it — is  that  le  vrai  amour  est  simple  comme  un 
has  relief  antique.  Such  a  relief,  which  before  all 
others  corresponds  to  the  image,  is  to  be  found 
in  the  Naples  museum.  It  shows  a  man  and  a 
woman,  standing  still  on  either  side  of  a  tree. 
An  artist  of  antiquity  may  have  already  foreseen 


The  Evolution  of  Love  105 

all  the  significance  that  a  son  of  our  time  in- 
terpreted, when  he  placed  a  youth  and  a  maiden 
beneath  the  tree  of  life  with  a  cloven  apple  in 
their  hands:  they  divided  the  apple  of  life  and  ate 
it  together.  .  .  . 

For  a  couple  who  share  it  thus,  every-day  life 
will  scintillate  with  little  delights  as  a  wheat- 
field  at  midsummer  with  cornflowers;  and  the 
high  days  will  be  white  with  joy  as  a  spring 
garden  with  fruit  blossoms.  A  couple  who  live 
thus  will  be  able  to  play  so  that  beyond  their 
sport  will  always  be  the  calm  of  tenderness;  to 
smile  so  that  behind  their  smiles  will  always  lie 
an  easily-aroused  seriousness.  Unless  death  in- 
terrupts them  they  will  thus  build  up  their  life 
together  as  the  Gothic  cathedrals  were  built: 
buttress  upon  buttress,  arch  above  arch,  orna- 
ment within  ornament,  until  finally  the  gilding 
of  the  topmost  spire  catches  the  last  rays  of  the 
sunset. 


Thus  great  love  already  gives  to  two  human 
beings  what  only  completed  development  can  give 
to  mankind  as  a  whole :  unity  between  senses  and 
soul,  desire  and  duty,  self-assertion  and  self- 
devotion,  between  the  individual  and  the  race, 
the  present  moment  and  the  future. 

This  condition — in  which  every  advantage 
gained  becomes  a  gift  and  every  gift  a  profit ;  in 
which  are  united  a  continual  emotion  and  a  calm 


io6  Love  and  Marriage 

peace — is  even  now  that  which  dreamers  await 
as  that  of  the  third  kingdom.' 

^  In  England,  Tennyson,  in  The  Princess,  was  the  first  to  give 
to  "the  new  woman"  her  name  and  to  speak  of  her  objects, 
and  many  others  began  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century  indirectly 
to  develop  the  idea  of  love,  especially  Elizabeth  Barrett  Brown- 
ing, the  sisters  Bronte,  and  Miss  Muloch  among  women  writers. 
Robert  Browning,  George  Meredith,  and  other  great  poets  among 
the  men  have  also  furthered  it  indirectly.  In  later  days, 
George  Egerton  in  Rosa  Amorösa  and  Edward  Carpenter  in 
Loves  Coming  of  Age  have,  in  their  different  ways,  given  a  re- 
markable treatment  of  the  evolution  of  love.  Woman  Free  by 
Ellis  Ethelmer,  A  Noviciate  for  Marriage  by  Edith  M.  Ellis, 
The  Woman  Who  Did  by  Grant  Allen,  belong  to  the  same  group 
of  writings. 


CHAPTER  III 


love's  freedom 


The  most  delicate  test  of  a  person's  sense  of 
morality  is  his  power  of  interpreting  ambiguous 
signs  of  the  times  in  the  ethical  sphere;  for  only 
the  profoundly  moral  can  discover  the  dividing 
line,  sharp  as  the  edge  of  a  sword,  between  new 
morality  and  old  immorality. 

In  our  time  ethical  obtuseness  betrays  itself 
first  and  foremost  by  the  condemnation  of  those 
young  couples  who  freely  unite  their  destinies. 
The  majority  does  not  perceive  the  advance  in 
morality  which  this  implies  in  comparison  with 
the  code  of  so  many  men,  who  without  responsi- 
bility— and  without  apparent  risk — purchase  the 
repose  of  their  senses. 

Those  young  men  who  choose  ''free  love"  know 
that  bought  love  may  destroy  their  finest  instru- 
ments of  mental  activity ;  that  it  may  result  in 
injury  to  the  wife  as  well  as  in  the  danger  either 
of  degeneracy  on  the  part  of  the  children,  or  of 
childishness,  and  may  finally  bring  about  their 
own  premature  downfall. 

But  they  also  know  that  these  results  may  not 

107 


io8  Love  and  Marriage 

occur  and  that,  on  the  other  hand,  they  may 
suffer  spiritually  by  curbing  their  personality 
and  ruining  their  possibilities  of  single-hearted 
love.  At  the  same  time  they  despise  their  fathers* 
less  dangerous,  but  for  that  reason  more  unprin- 
cipled, expedient  for  sexual  satisfaction,  the 
seduction  of  women  of  the  people,  women  with 
whom  they  never  had  any  thought  of  community 
of  life. 

"Free  love, "  on  the  other  hand,  gives  them  an 
enhancement  of  life  which  they  consider  that 
they  gain  without  injuring  anyone.  It  answers 
to  their  idea  of  love's  chastity,  an  idea  which  is 
justly  offended  by  the  incompleteness  of  the 
period  of  engagement  with  all  its  losses  in  the 
freshness  and  frankness  of  emotion.  When  their 
soul  has  found  another  soul,  when  the  senses  of 
both  have  met  in  a  common  longing,  then  they 
consider  that  they  have  a  right  to  the  full  unity 
of  love,  although  compelled  to  secrecy,  since  the 
conditions  of  society  render  early  marriage  im- 
possible. They  are  thus  freed  from  a  wasteful 
struggle,  which  would  neither  give  them  peace 
nor  inner  purity  and  which  would  be  doubly 
hard  for  them,  since  they  have  attained  the  end— - 
love — for  the  sake  of  which  self-control  would 
have  been  imposed. 


When  in  this  connection  we  speak  of  youth, 
we  can  mean  only  the  young  men  and  girls  of  the 


Love's  Freedom  109 

upper  classes.  For  among  the  rest  of  society 
the  free  union  of  love  has  long  been  the  custom. 
Our  working  classes — as  those  of  many  European 
countries — simply  use  the  same  freedom  which 
the  custom  of  society  allows  to  many  extra- 
European  peoples.  Ethnographical  research 
shows  that  this  is  no  new  degraded  habit,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  a  relic  of  primitive  customs. 
Among  certain  extra-European  peoples — for  ex- 
ample, one  in  north  Burmah  —  this  custom  was 
accompanied  by  definite  guarantees  for  the  pos- 
sible children.  Young  people  may  without  hind- 
rance unite  freely,  and  separate  if  they  do  not 
find  their  feeling  deep  enough  for  continued  life 
together.  In  the  contrary  case,  they  marry, 
and  after  marriage  infidelity  is  as  good  as  un- 
known. If  the  girl  becomes  a  mother,  without 
a  marriage  following,  the  man  is  obliged  to  secure 
the  child  through  a  sum  paid  to  the  girl's  father, 
who  is  then  answerable  for  it. 

It  is  from  similar  sexual  customs  that  the  ma- 
jority of  our  Swedish  people  derive  theirs — that 
people  which  in  royal  and  academic  speeches 
has  gained  the  character  of  being  "the  most 
law-abiding  and  loyal"  in  the  world.  Failing 
a  deeper  love  or  a  sense  of  responsibility,  these 
customs  involve  the  abandonment  of  the  woman, 
infanticide,  and  sometimes  the  prostitution  of 
the  woman,  when  she  has  passed  from  one  man 
to  another;  finally  the  encumbrance  of  society 
with  the  children  of  different  fathers  to  whom 


no  Love  and  Marriage 

she  has  given  Hfe,  besides  the  neglect  of  the 
children.  And  the  custom  leads — even  in  those 
cases  where  both  love  and  responsibility  are 
present,  but  where  the  lovers  are  too  young — 
to  the  enfeebling  of  themselves  and  of  the  children, 
and  to  the  great  mortality  of  the  latter.  Not 
only  hard  labour  and  scanty  food,  but  also  a 
premature  sexual  life,  contribute  to  hinder  the 
full  bodily  development  of  the  lower  classes  and 
to  hasten  their  growing  old. 

But  by  the  side  of  these  evil  effects  there  are 
good  ones.  In  most  cases,  a  young  couple's 
prospect  of  parentage  leads  their  relatives  to 
make  their  marriage  possible.  When  this  cannot 
take  place  immediately,  the  daughter  and  her 
child  stay  with  the  parents  of  one  of  them,  or 
she  leaves  the  child  with  them,  while  she  on  her 
side,  and  the  young  man  on  his,  work  for  the 
future.  Even  when  the  man  has  not  always 
been  disposed  for  marriage,  their  common  life 
of  work  and  the  sense  of  parentage  soon  show  a 
uniting  force.  Such  couples  who  have  come  to- 
gether in  youth  probably  have  better  prospects 
for  their  life  together  than  an  upper-class  couple, 
worn  out  by  a  long  engagement,  in  which  the 
bride  has  a  full  right  to  her  orange-flowers — to 
say  nothing  of  the  health  contributed  by  the 
man  of  the  people  in  comparison  with  the  ma- 
jority of  men  of  the  upper  class,  who  have  bought 
their  injurious  substitute  for  marriage  while 
waiting  for  the  promotion  which  should  make 


Love's  Freedom  in 

marriage  possible.  One  thing  at  any  rate  is 
certain:  that  matrimonial  fidelity  among  the 
people  is  as  great  as  freedom  before  marriage  is 
unlimited.  That  the  free  love  of  the  peasant 
and  working  class  ends,  as  a  rule,  in  marriage, 
often  depends  on  the  fact  that  public  opinion 
supports  this  as  a  point  of  morality.  But — in 
those  cases  where  love  itself  does  not  bring  about 
community  of  life — the  sense  of  parentage  and  the 
need  of  a  helpmate  are  as  decisive  as  public 
opinion;  for  even  among  the  erotically  unde- 
veloped the  need  of  cohabitation  makes  itself 
felt  for  other  purposes  than  the  instinct  of  the 
race.  It  is  the  desire  for  such  community  of 
life — with  its  sharing  of  pleasure  and  hardship, 
sorrow  and  attention — which  makes  it  really 
uniting.  Where  no  such  desire  exists,  the  rela- 
tionship becomes  immoral  from  the  point  of 
view  of  life-enhancement.  If  this  standard  of 
morality  be  not  adhered  to,  free  love  among 
the  upper  class — as  among  the  lower  class — will, 
it  is  true,  contribute  to  the  abolition  of  prosti- 
tution, but  not  to  the  exaltation  of  mankind 
through  a  greater  love,  a  higher  morality. 

For  if,  on  the  one  hand,  the  sexual  customs  of 
the  lower  class  allow  more  right  than  those  of 
the  upper  class  to  the  direct  claims  of  nature, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  customs  of  the  latter  still 
provide  the  same  opportunities  for  the  elevation 
into  love  of  the  instinct  which,  from  an  historical 
and  ethnographical  point  of  view,  has  everywhere 


112  Love  and  Marriage 

been  provided  by  self-control.  Among  those 
nations  with  which  sexual  connections  begin 
early,  morals  are,  as  a  rule,  loose,  and  where  morals 
are  loose,  the  emotion  of  love  has  small  importance. 
The  control  of  sensuality  develops  the  deeper 
feelings  of  love.  We  need  not  go  to  the  nations  of 
the  past,  or  to  existing  extra-European  peoples, 
but  only  to  the  town  and  country  labourers  of 
our  own  and  other  European  lands,  to  see  how 
the  feelings  become  lax  and  feeble,  the  senses  coarse 
and  greedy,  when  they  have  acquired  the  habit 
of  satisfying  physical  htrnger  before  that  of  the 
soul  has  awakened.  The  miserable  conditions 
of  dwelling  among  the  lower  classes  are  enough 
by  themselves  to  rob  sexual  life  of  its  discretion; 
immature  age  or  the  tie  of  blood  is  frequently 
no  hindrance  to  unchastity,  and  its  consequences 
— coarseness  and  lack  of  responsibility  towards 
one  another  as  well  as  towards  the  offspring — 
at  times  take  hideous  forms.  The  first  condition 
therefore  for  love's  freedom  is  that  the  freedom 
shall  concern  love,  the  most  universal  sign  of 
which  is  the  desire  of  continued  community  of 
life.  As  this  sign  is,  as  a  rule,  to  be  found  among 
young  people  of  the  educated  class  who  now  claim 
love's  freedom,  they  are  thus  far  within  their 
rights,  as  also  are  the  young  people  of  the  lower 
class  when  they  use  the  same  freedom  and  as 
a  result  form  many  excellent  connubial  unions. 
We  could  with  every  reason — and  with  more 
reason — draw  the  same  conclusions  with  regard 


Love's  Freedom  113 

to  the  upper  class,  if  it  were  not  the  case  that 
among  these  love  has  become  a  so  much  more 
penetrating  force.  While  the  majority  of  the 
working  class — for  even  there  a  minority  with 
more  refined  erotic  feelings  is  to  be  ■  found, — in 
addition  to  the  satisfaction  of  its  instincts,  con- 
tents itself  with  a  capable  and  devoted  comrade 
to  bear  its  burden,  the  developed  man  or  woman 
of  the  present  day  has  deeper  erotic  needs.  It 
is  the  satisfaction  of  these  that  is  often  missed 
by  a  youthful  decision  in  life;  for  even  when 
youthful  love  is  soulful — and  nearly  all  youthful 
love  can  so  be  described — it  is  nevertheless  in 
most  cases  a  longing  for  love  rather  than  love, 
a  craving  for  experience  rather  than  the  new  life 
itself.  And  therefore  the  erotic  feelings  of  early 
youth  are  founded  upon  the  illusions  which  make 
a  Romeo  lament  the  harshness  of  Rosalind  a 
moment  before  meeting  Juliet,  and  a  Titania  to 
fondle  Bottom's  ass's  ears.  Never  in  after  life 
has  the  world  such  a  marvellous  glamour  as  when 
the  first  dream  of  love  has  swathed  all  contours 
in  its  opalescent  mists  of  sunrise,  but — never  do 
we  so  easily  go  astray.  It  may  happen  that  the 
lifting  of  the  mists  will  disclose  the  most  beautiful 
landscape.  But  there  are  more  chances  that  the 
course  one  has  steered  in  the  fog  will  end  in  one 
of  many  shipwrecks.  Therefore  the  "  'teens'* 
should  be  the  age  of  the  erotic  prologue,  not  of 
the  drama.  For  this  reason  also,  that  no  one  can 
decide  to  what  degree  the  transient  may  injure  the 

8 


114  Love  and  Marriage 

final  relations  of  life ;  nor  to  what  degree  great  love 
may  be  missed  or  spoiled,  when  accidental  love 
has  anticipated  its  rights,  even  though  this  hap- 
pened in  the  full  and  frank  belief  that  the  accident 
was  destiny. 

No  part  of  the  art  of  living  is  more  important 
for  youth  than  developing  in  one's  self  the  know- 
ledge of  a  predestined  fellowship  which  permits 
of  waiting.  People  curse  the  hazards  which 
separate  lovers.  But  it  is  less  the  hazards  which 
separate  than  those  which  unite  at  the  wrong 
time,  that  ought  to  be  cursed .  First  youth  seldom 
loses  in  love  anything  but  what  is  unimportant ; 
the  reality  shows  itself — when  both  are  free — 
as  what  cannot  be  lost.  Those  who  belong  to  each 
other  come  together  in  the  end;  those  whom 
chance  parts,  never  belonged  to  each  other.  A 
man  may  fail  of  happiness  by  finding  out  too 
late  what  is  real  in  himself  or  others;  not  by 
abstaining  from  action  before  this  discovery. 
Therefore  youth  should  wait  before  making 
decisive  plunges  into  its  own  and  others'  destinies, 
since  great  love  may  resemble  the  Japanese 
divinity,  to  pray  to  whom  more  than  once  is  a 
crime,  since  it  answers  prayer  only  once. 


But  even  when  a  young  couple  has  the  pro- 
foundest  mutual  sense  of  the  permanence  of 
their  feeling,  it  does  not  follow  that  their  love 


Love's  Freedom  115 

ought  immediately  to  involve  the  rights  and  the 
accompanying  reponsibilities  of  a  later  age. 
For  young  trees  break  or  bend  under  too  heavy 
a  weight  of  fruit,  nor  does  the  fruit  attain  its 
full  value  on  trees  that  are  too  young.  Here 
nature  herself  is  the  opponent  of  youthful  mar- 
riages. Let  us  leave  on  one  side  the  possibility 
of  people  being  unwillingly  bound  together 
through  the  consequences  of  an  over-hasty  union, 
and  deal  only  with  the  certainty  that  the  young 
people  in  a  profound  sense  continue  to  belong 
to  each  other.  They  will  nevertheless  as  surely 
suffer  through  the  possible  or  probable  conse- 
quence of  their  action ,  the  child.  Their  conscious- 
ness of  not  being  able  to  bear  this  consequence  will 
doubtless  make  them  try  to  avoid  it.  But  this 
is  an  ugly  beginning  to  a  life  of  love.  Many  con- 
sider that  it  also  involves  dangers.  For  those 
who  have  already  given  to  the  race  their  tribute 
of  new  life,  or  who  ought  never  thus  to  give,  the 
choice  must  be  free  between  the  two  dangers. 
But  for  the  opening  of  a  life  in  common  this  re- 
source may  be  equally  unsafe  and  unwholesome, 
since  the  racial  instinct  as  a  whole  is  left  unac- 
complished. And  thus  love  is  robbed  of  a  part 
of  its  spiritual  meaning,  and  sensuousness  of  its 
natural  restraint.  But  even  if  these  conse- 
quences do  not  follow,  "failure"  may  yet  be 
the  most  fortunate  occurrence  in  these  cases — 
and  also  the  most  usual.  How  then  does  it 
appear  in  reality? 


ii6  Love  and  Marriage 

In  most  cases  young  people  have  entered  into 
their  free  union  because  they  have  seen  no  possi- 
bility of  an  open  marriage.  They  are  the  less 
able  to  support  a  child,  as  they  themselves  are 
supported  by  others,  in  so  far  as  they  are  not 
keeping  themselves  by  running  into  debt  or  by 
badly-paid  labour.  In  the  latter  case,  the  child 
means  a  further  hindrance  to  life,  the  more  so  as 
it  must  involve  for  the  woman  a  diminution, 
perhaps  a  total  loss,  of  her  powers  of  work.  It 
is  therefore  the  young  people's  relatives  who  have 
to  help.  And,  when  this  is  possible,  the  form  it 
takes  is  that  the  lovers  are  obliged  to  marry  and 
receive  the  help  that  the  parents  can  afford.  In  the 
case  of  the  poorer  classes,  this  is  comparatively 
slight,  as  the  newly-married  pair  frequently  stay 
with  the  parents  of  one  of  them.  But  in  the  upper 
classes,  on  the  other  hand,  they  prefer,  with  full 
reason,  to  form  their  own  home,  and  then  there 
ensue  the  inevitable  cares  of  child  and  house- 
keeping, however  simple  the  latter  may  be. 
But  these  will  be  a  hindrance  to  their  studies, 
their  freedom  of  movement,  and  general  develop- 
ment. They  become  cage-birds,  at  best  fed 
by  their  parents;  bound  by  duties  during  the 
years  which  should  have  been  wholly  devoted  to 
their  self -development. 

Thus  premature  marriages,  whether  lawful  or 
unlawful  in  form,  may  arrest  in  their  growth 
countless  excellent  forces,  and  ruin  the  full  possi- 
bilities of  happiness  in   later  years.     It  is  true 


Love's  Freedom  117 

that  the  early  union  will  have  stilled  a  powerful 
longing  in  the  young  people's  being.  But  they 
soon  find  out  that  it  has  at  the  same  time  rendered 
difficult,  perhaps  impossible,  the  satisfaction  of 
their  desire  of  knowledge,  the  taste  for  research, 
the  creative  power,  and  freedom  of  action  in  other, 
more  or  less  important,  directions;  for  example, 
in  the  love  of  travel  which  is  felt  by  all  young 
people  of  spirit,  and  in  the  love  of  pleasure  in  a 
wholesome  sense.  The  young  mother's  beauty 
probably  never  attains  the  fulness  designed  by 
nature,  and  she  is  destined  to  grow  old  before  her 
time.  And  even  when  her  children  are  not 
weaklings — as  is  most  frequently  the  case — 
they  do  not  afford  her  the  happiness  they  might 
have  brought  if  they  had  been  longed  for ;  if  she 
had  not  had  to  sacrifice  to  them  her  youthful 
joy,  the  fulness  of  her  strength  and  beauty,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  had  felt  this  enhanced  through 
motherhood.  Above  all,  the  children  do  not 
receive  the  bringing-up  which  the  mother  might 
give  them  at  a  somewhat  maturer  age. 

Even  if  a  pair  of  lovers  are  themselves  willing 
to  be  subject  to  the  hindrances  imposed  in  most 
cases  by  a  premature  union,  this  must  be  their 
own  affair;  but  for  the  child  there  must  be  loss. 

In  order  that  the  child  may  enjoy  the  full  possi- 
bility of  favourable  conditions  of  life — in  birth 
as  well  as  in  bringing-up — in  northern  Europe 
the  age  of  the  woman  at  marriage  should  be  at 
least  twenty,  that  of  the  man  about  twenty-five. 


ii8  Love  and  Marriage 

This  is  the  period  of  full  maturity,  and  until  this 
age  is  reached  youth  itself  gains  by  complete 
abstinence,  in  order  by  its  marriage  at  the  proper 
age,  in  the  words  of  Tacitus,  to  ''let  the  children 
witness  to  their  parents'  strength. "  In  the 
opinion  of  most  younger  men  of  science  it  is  less 
and  less  probable  that  acquired  qualities  are 
inherited.  Others,  again,  who  have  defended 
or  still  hold  this  view,  have  maintained  with  more 
or  less  force — as  a  condition  of  the  progress  of 
the  race — that  procreation  should  not  take  place 
until  the  activity  and  surroundings  of  the  parents 
have  acquired  a  definite  character.  Acute  psycho- 
logists who  have  given  attention  to  woman's 
nature,  consider  that  it  does  not  attain  its  full 
spiritual  matiuity  before  about  the  age  of  thirty, 
while  she  then  still  possesses  her  youthfulness 
unimpaired ;  that  until  then  her  countenance  does 
not  acquire  its  true  completeness  of  expression; 
that  her  individuality,  intellectual  powers,  and 
passion  are  then  for  the  first  time  fully  awake; 
that  only  these  properties  can  inspire  deep  love, 
and  that  thus  woman  gains  everything  by  a  later 
marriage,  whereas  the  result  of  early  marriages, 
where  the  husband  has  to  "educate"  his  wife,  is 
frequently,  as  a  witty  lady  has  remarked,  that 
he  is  destined  instead  to  educate  a  wife  for 
someone  else. 

Nor  is  it  only  narrow-viewed  preachers  of 
morality,  but  men  of  science  with  the  broadest 
outlook  in  these  matters,  who  declare  ever  more 


Love's  Freedom  119 

positively  that  abstinence  until  the  age  of  maturity 
is  in  a  high  degree  favourable  to  the  physico- 
psychical  strength  and  elasticity  of  both  sexes, 
and  that  such  favourable  effect  may  sometimes 
extend  beyond  this  age. 

To  this  direct  gain  must  also  be  added  the 
indirect  one:  that  all  self-control  for  a  greater 
and  gladdening  end — and  what  end  can  be  greater 
than  this  one? — gives  to  the  will  that  force  and  to 
the  personality  that  joy  in  its  strength  which 
will  later  be  all-important  in  every  other  de- 
partment of  life. 

Such  an  advancement  of  the  age  of  marriage 
will  probably  not  be  opposed  by  many  women. 
Young  girls  have  learned  by  the  experience  of 
others,  and  now  there  is  scarcely  to  be  found  a 
woman  married  before  the  age  of  twenty  who 
has  not  discovered  that  it  was  premature  before 
she  reaches  twenty-five.  Moreover  it  is  seldom 
the  woman's  desire  that  hurries  on  a  secret  union; 
for,  in  the  absence  of  any  admixture  of  Southern 
blood,  it  is  a  long  time,  many  years  indeed  in 
some  cases,  before  the  senses  of  the  Northern 
woman  are  consciously  awakened. 

But  the  young  girl  loves  and  wishes  to  satisfy 
the  longing  from  which  she  sees  her  lover  suffer, 
the  more  so  when  she  comes  to  know  that  the 
demonstrations  of  affection  which  have  satisfied 
her  needs  have  increased  his  suffering.  And 
therefore  she  silences  her  own  innermost  con- 
sciousness, which  adjures  her  to  wait. 


120  Love  and  Marriage 

This  silencing  of  the  inner  voice  not  infre- 
quently has  for  its  result  that  the  two  souls  are 
never  fully  united,  since  the  senses  have  stood 
in  their  way;  or  in  Nietzsche's  words:  Die  Sinn- 
lichkeit  ilhereilt  oft  das  Wachsthum  der  Liebe  so  dass 
die  Wurzcln  schwach  hleihen  und  leiclit  auszureissen 
sind.  In  every  pure  feeling  of  morality,  a  young 
woman  who  thus  surrenders  herself  in  love  stands 
immeasurably  above  the  engaged  girl  of  good 
family  who  allows  the  man  she  says  she  loves  to 
toil  alone  during  the  best  years  of  his  young 
manhood,  so  as  at  last  to  prepare  for  her  the 
position  which  her  own  ideas  of  life,  or  those  of 
her  family,  demand.  But  higher  than  either 
stands  the  young  woman  who  has  known  how 
to  preserve  the  freshness  of  love's  springtime. 
And  when  women's  own  claims  of  happiness  have 
become  more  refined,  when  their  insight  into 
nature  is  more  profound,  w^hen  they  thus  become 
fit  to  take  the  lead  in  erotic  development — which 
in  Scandinavia  during  the  last  generation  has 
unfortunately  been  in  man's  hands, — then  they 
will  also  understand  this.  They  must  prolong 
the  happy  time  when  love  is  unspoken,  unfettered 
by  promises,  full  of  expectation  and  intuition. 
And  they  need  not  on  this  account  give  up  the 
comradeship  in  sport,  in  walks,  and  studies,  which 
is  wholesome  in  itself,  cheerful  and  preparatory 
to  happiness,  but  which  now  leads  to  premature 
unions.  Women  will  come  to  understand  when 
they  ought  to  be  on  their  guard,  in  order  that  the 


Love's  Freedom  121 

sufferings  of  the  period  of  waiting  may  be  minim- 
ised. They  will  shorten  the  secret  engagement, 
and  they  will  do  away  with  the  public  engagement, 
with  the  dangers  both  involve  of  attenuation  of 
the  feelings,  and  with  the  latter's  profanation 
of  love's  privacy. 

If  the  youth  of  the  North  does  not  feel  its 
soul  in  harmony  with  this  mood,  its  life  will  have 
lost  its  springtime — without  receiving  in  exchange 
a  longer  summer;  for  premature  warmth  has 
its  revenge  in  life  as  in  nature.  To  experience 
ftilly  the  peculiar  beauty  of  each  season  of  life 
is  the  attribute  of  a  profounder  comprehension 
of  life's  meaning — and  this  truth  is  not  less  true 
because  a  Juliet  was  only  fourteen.  What 
Shakespeare  has  revealed  in  her  is  not  the  force 
of  early  love,  incomparable  with  any  other  power; 
rather  does  he  show  the  love,  instantaneous, 
fatal,  overcoming  all  obstacles,  which — equally 
powerful  at  every  age — yet  shows  its  force  most 
unmistakably  when  it  drives  two  human  beings 
to  death  just  at  the  time  when  the  yet  unlived 
life  they  have  before  them  makes  the  thought  of 
death  most  full  of  horror.  Only  such  an  ex- 
ception can  anticipate  in  springtime  the  flowering 
of  summer.  It  is  therefore  not  from  the  whole 
necessity  of  their  nature,  but  from  attaching  too 
much  importance  to  one  side  of  it,  that  many 
young  people  now  have  the  idea  that  love  loses 
its  fire  and  its  purity  by  waiting  until  the  or- 
ganism   can    bear    its    fruits.     Nothing    is  more 


122  Love  and  Marriage 

certain  than  that  the  chastity  of  perfect  love  is 
conditioned  towards  unity  by  the  will  of  the 
soul  and  the  senses.  But  this  chaste  will  may 
be  found  before  or  after  the  possibility  of  its 
realisation.  And  love's  chastity  may  then  show 
itself  as  well  in  waiting  for  complete  unity  as  in 
altogether  renouncing  the  same. 

It  is  true  that  a  young  man  will  not  experience 
the  intoxication  of  love  at  twenty-five  as  he 
experienced  it  some  years  earlier.  But  if  he 
feels  it  for  the  first  time  at  about  twenty -five, 
then — according  to  all  the  laws  of  physico- 
psychical  sensations  of  pleasure — just  at  the 
height  of  his  sexual  existence,  and  after  years  of 
self-control  and  labour  for  happiness,  he  ought 
to  be  able  to  experience  a  richer  vital  intoxication 
than  he  would  have  been  capable  of  in  the  earlier 
years  of  his  youth. 

It  is  incontestable  that  premature  erotic  claims 
are  less  the  result  of  the  needs  of  the  organism 
than  of  the  influence  of  the  imagination  upon  it. 
Only  a  new  healthiness  and  beauty  in  the  method 
of  treating  erotic  questions  will  gradually  re- 
fashion the  now  over-excited  imagination,  calm 
erotic  curiosity,  and  strengthen  the  sense  of 
responsibility  towards  self  and  towards  the  new 
generation,  so  that  premature  sexual  life  may 
lose  its  attraction  for  the  young. 


All  this  however  concerns  only  immature  youth. 


Love's  Freedom  123 

When,  on  the  other  hand,  a  pair  of  lovers  have 
reached  the  age  referred  to  as  that  of  full  maturity, 
and  their  complete  union  can  only  further  their 
own  life-enhancement  and  that  of  the  race,  then 
they  commit  a  sin  against  themselves  and  the 
race  if  they  do  not  enter  into  union. 

But  not  "even  in  such  a  case  is  secret  love 
desirable,  in  which  the  woman  goes  in  constant 
uneasiness  for  the  possible  child,  and  yet — after 
the  first  period  of  happiness — in  a  growing  desire 
not  only  for  it  but  for  all  the  other  conditions 
of  life  which  might  give  sun  and  fresh  air  to  her 
feeling,  confined,  as  it  were,  in  forcing-house  or 
cellar. 

In  most  cases  it  is  only  a  question  of  time  how 
soon  this  secret  happiness  will  languish,  since 
the  risk  is  almost  entirely  on  the  woman's  side 
and  the  man  is  too  much  in  the  position  of  one 
who  receives.  For  human  nature  is  such  that 
this  makes  one  hard;  and  love  is  such  that  this 
makes  one  weak.  If  the  man  is  not  hardened 
thereby,  it  is  because  he  is  extremely  sensitive. 
And  again,  if  he  is  so,  then  the  secret  union,  in 
which  the  woman  gives  most,  becomes  just  as 
humiliating  to  the  man  as  a  marriage  in  which 
the  wife  keeps  him  by  her  fortune  or  her  work. 
The  woman,  on  her  side,  will  be  the  more  difficult 
to  please,  will  make  higher  claims  upon  the  love 
which  is  to  compensate  her  for  the  home  and  for 
the  child,  the  two  interests  through  which  she 
would  first  have  felt  her  powers  developed  in 


124  Love  and  Marriage 

every  direction,  or,  in  other  words,  would  have 
gained  complete  happiness. 

For  a  woman's  best  qualities,  even  as  a  mis- 
tress, are  inseparably  bound  up  with  the  mother- 
hood in  her  nature. 

There  has  been  and  is  an  infinity  of  talk  about 
the  degradation  of  woman  by  her  complete 
surrender  without  marriage ;  that  the  man  thus 
depreciates  his  loved  one  in  his  own  eyes  and 
himself  in  hers;  that  he  is  selfish  in  proposing  a 
union  which  injures  the  virtue  and  modesty  of 
love;  that  he  ''sacrifices"  the  woman  to  his 
desire;  and  so  on  without  end.  All  this  talk  is 
worthless,  simply  because  a  woman  who  loves 
feels  herself  degraded  neither  in  her  own  eyes 
nor  in  those  of  the  man ;  because  she  has  no  idea 
of  a  "sacrifice, "  but  of  giving  and  receiving.  For 
she  desires  the  completeness  of  love  with  a  much 
profounder  will  than  man,  since  her  erotic  needs 
are  stronger — although  calmer — than  his.  But 
she  is  frequently — and  often  for  a  long  time — 
unconscious  that  her  profound  desire  to  be  made 
happy  at  any  price  through  love  nevertheless 
refers  at  bottom  to  the  child.  The  man  sees 
only  the  woman's  longing  and  his  happy  smile 
not  unfrequently  tells  of  an  easy  victory.  But 
he  does  not  know — for  a  long  time  she  does  not 
know  herself — when  her  love  becomes  a  sacrifice; 
when  she  begins  to  feel  her  position  as  a  degrading 
one.  The  man  does  not  see  what  her  smile 
conceals ;  he  does  not  understand  her  when  she 


Love's  Freedom  125 

is  silent,  and  perhaps  he  does  not  listen  when  she 
speaks.  He  thus  believes  her  to  be  still  satisfied, 
when  she  has  begun  to  hunger  for  more. 

Woman's  need  of  living  and  suffering  for  the 
race  gives  her  love  a  purer  glow,  a  higher  flame, 
a  profounder  will,  a  more  tireless  fidelity  than 
man's.  The  unsatisfied  longing  for  motherhood 
is  released  in  an  ever  warmer,  ever  more  self- 
sacrificing  affection  for  the  loved  one.  Man,  on 
the  other  hand,  who  has  less  and  less  opportunity 
of  giving,  thereby  comes  to  love  less  and  less. 
When  the  woman  discovers  this,  she  begins  to 
remember  what  she  has  given.  And  then  strife, 
sin,  sorrow,  and  their  wages — death — have  entered 
into  what  was  perhaps  at  the  beginning  a  genuine 
love;  a  love  which  might  have  had  a  full  and  fair 
life,  if  it  had  had  the  unifying  and  purifying 
influence  of  a  common  end,  a  great  purpose. 

When  love  possesses  nothing  of  this  kind,  its 
power  of  motion  is  directed  against  itself.  The 
feelings  of  both  parties  then  become  the  object 
of  a  game  like  that  of  parfiler,  which  was  the  rage 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  which  consisted 
in  drawing  the  threads  out  of  worn-out  cloth  of 
gold.  The  feelings  are  torn  up,  ripped  open,  tied 
together;  tangled,  disentangled,  and  wound  up. 
But  feelings  are  roots,  not  threads — not  even 
gold  threads.  It  is  in  the  great,  wholesome 
realities  of  life  that  the  creative  force  of  love, 
like  that  of  art,  finds  the  productive  earth  for 
its   growth.     Tom   out   of   this   earth,   love,    as 


126  Love  and  Marriage 

surely  as  art,  is  like  a  tree  blown  down  by  a  spring 
storm,  which  may  indeed  put  forth  leaves  this 
spring — though  all  its  roots  are  exposed  to  the 
air — but  which  will  not  live  through  the  summer. 

Clandestine  love  is  in  this  respect  like  an  upper- 
class  marriage  without  children  and  without 
common  pursuits,  although  the  self-sacrificing, 
self-supporting,  clandestine  mistress  stands  far 
above  the  kept  wife,  fashionable  and  full  of 
pretension. 

Thus  it  is  not  abstract  ideas  of  duty,  but  real 
selfishness,  which  is  one  with  real  morality,  that 
will  teach  youth  to  understand  the  meaning  of 
Spinoza's  profound  thought,  made  still  more  pro- 
found by  the  doctrine  of  evolution:  that  "the 
sexual  love  which  has  its  origin  in  what  is  external 
and  accidental,  may  easily  be  turned  to  hate, 
a  kind  of  madness  that  is  nourished  on  discord; 
but  that  love,  on  the  other  hand,  is  lasting,  which 
has  its  cause  in  freedom  of  soul  and  in  the  will  to 
hear  and  bring  up  children.''^ 

Through  the  religion  of  life  and  its  countless 
influences,  through  gradual,  scarcely  perceptible 
transformations,  will  love's  freedom  more  and 
more  come  to  mean  freedom  for  enduring  love. 

The  spirit  of  the  age,  working  through  the 
standards  of  literature  and  public  opinion,  trans- 
forms with  infallible  certainty  thoughts  and  feelings 
in  the  direction  in  which  the  strongest  lead  them. 

It  now  rests  with  the  yotmg  to  be  these  strong 
ones. 


Love's  Freedom  127 

With  the  growing  desire  for  a  many-sided  en- 
hancement of  Hfe,  parentage  will  also  become 
an  ever  more  important  condition  of  this  en- 
hancement. Yotmg  people  will  be  no  more 
willing  to  depreciate  by  a  premature  sexual  life 
the  value  of  those  years  which  ought  to  be  devoted 
to  furthering  their  individual  growth,  than  they 
will  be  to  diminish  their  joy  of  parentage  by  put- 
ting a  weak  and  unwelcome  child  into  the  world. 
For  they  will  wish  to  possess  all  happiness  fully 
and  frankly.  The  expected  child  ought  to  give 
them  beautiful  dreams,  not  tormenting  uneasiness ; 
it  must  be  carried  in  rejoicing,  not  in  unwilling, 
arms,  and  must  have  received  life  from  the  fulness 
of  happiness — not  from  a  mischance. 

Here  as  everywhere,  what  is  the  most  genuine 
and  lasting  happiness  for  the  individual  is  also 
for  the  moral  enhancement  the  race. 

When  two  lovers  have  this  desire  and  have 
reached  that  maturity,  when  the  will  has  a  right 
to  realisation,  and  is  in  full  agreement  with  the 
health  and  beauty  of  themselves,  of  the  new 
generation,  and  of  society,  it  is  right  that  they 
should  come  together,  even  though  it  may  not 
be  possible  for  their  pure  desire  of  common  life 
and  common  work  to  take  the  form  of  marriage. 

For  him  who  has  ears  to  hear,  these  figures 
will  speak:  they  show  that  the  average  age  of 
unlawful  unions  is  the  right  age  appointed  by 
nature  for  marriage.  Thus  the  statistics  of 
Sweden  for  1900  show   that  6340  "illegitimate'* 


128  Love  and  Marriage 

children  were  born  of  mothers  between  20  and 
2^  years  old,  while  those  born  of  mothers  under 
20  were  2028,  and  of  mothers  between  25  and  30, 
3857.  Another  eloquent  fact  is  that,  even 
before  the  extension  of  compulsory  military  ser- 
vice, the  highest  figures  of  emigration,  for  men 
as  well  as  women,  occur  among  the  unmarried 
within  a  year  or  two  on  either  side  of  twenty. 

By  unlawful  unions,  the  race  is  often  defrauded 
of  the  children's  fitness  for  life,  which  is  ruined 
by  the  unfavourable  conditions  in  which  the 
children  are  brought  up;  and  by  emigration 
the  best  blood  of  the  country  is  drained  away. 
And  even  if  the  latter  is  occasioned  by  a  variety 
of  causes,  no  thoughtful  person  could  omit  to 
reckon  among  them  the  difficulty  of  marrying 
at  the  right  time.  Another  equally  eloquent 
circumstance  fully  supported  by  statistical  evi- 
dence is  this :  that  prostitution  increases  in  direct 
proportion  as  the  general  social  conditions  and  the 
economical  situation  are  unfavourable  to  marriage, 
and  that  it  decreases  as  marriage  is  facilitated. 
And  the  majority  of  prostitutes — as  of  unmarried 
mothers — are  of  the  right  age  for  marriage. 

The  youth  of  the  upper  classes  ought  not, 
however,  in  their  struggle  against  actual  con- 
ditions, to  descend  to  the  irresponsibility  of  the 
lower  classes.  Educated  young  people  must  set 
an  example  to  the  rest,  not  only  by  entering  into 
their  matrimonial  alliances  at  the  right  time, 
but  also  in  a  way  that  is  unimpeachable  as  regards 


Love's  Freedom  "  129 

the  claims  of  the  race  and  of  society.  The  young 
have  a  perfect  right — Hke  their  contemporaries 
among  the  people — to  assume  the  responsibility 
of  founding  a  home,  which  may  be  denied  to  them, 
before  the  child  is  expected.  But  they  have  only 
a  right  to  this  kind  of  defiance  if  they  are  willing, 
as  soon  as  they  are  able,  themselves  to  provide 
for  the  new  creatures  who  will  one  day  replace 
them  in  the  race.  But  above  all  things,  edu- 
cated young  people  must  also  take  part  in  the 
social  reform  which — speaking  broadly — will  be 
the  only  solution  of  the  marriage  question. 

Instead  of  defending  "free  love,"  which  is  a 
much-abused  term  capable  of  many  interpre- 
tations, we  ought  to  strive  for  the  freedom  of 
love;  for  while  the  former  has  come  to  imply 
freedom  for  any  sort  of  love,  the  latter  must  only 
mean  freedom  for  a  feeling  which  is  worthy  the 
name  of  love. 

This  feeling,  it  may  be  hoped,  will  gradually 
win  for  itself  the  same  freedom  in  life  as  it  already 
possesses  in  poetry.  The  flowering,  as  well  as 
the  budding  of  love  will  then  be  a  secret  between 
the  lovers,  and  only  its  fruit  will  be  a  matter 
between  them  and  society.  As  always,  poetry 
has  pointed  out  the  way  to  development.  A 
great  poet  has  seldom  sung  of  lawfully-wedded 
happiness,  but  often  of  free  and  secret  love ;  and 
in  this  respect  too  the  time  is  coming  when  there 
will  no  longer  be  one  standard  of  morality  for 
poetry  and  another  for  life.     Even  the  poet  of 


I30  Love  and  Marriage 

Sakuntala  calls  that  love  the  most  beautiful 
which  gives  itself  freely  in  the  "Gandoarva  mar- 
riage," sanctified  only  by  the  fulness  of  emotion. 
But  even  then  the  danger  was  recognised  of 

.  .  .  unknown  heart  closing  against  unknown  heart. 

Even  then  it  was  uneasiness  about  the  fate  of 
the  child  which  coupled  responsibility  to  society 
with  love's  freedom. 

The  new  moral  consciousness  is  thus  an  old 
thing.  But  it  must  nevertheless  be  called  new, 
since  it  is  only  beginning  to  be  wide-spread.  It 
is  becoming  plain  to  more  and  more  people  that 
a  man  or  woman — whether  married  or  free — 
does  wrong  to  the  nobility  of  self  by  giving  him- 
self or  herself  to  one  who  is  at  heart  a  stranger ; 
it  is  more  and  more  becoming  intuitively  felt 
that  it  is  the  sense  of  home  in  another  soul  which 
gives  devotion  its  sanctity. 

The  suitor  who — dressed  for  the  occasion — 
went  first  to  the  father  to  declare  his  feelings 
for  the  daughter  is  already  such  an  old-fashioned 
type  that  it  is  past  ridicule.  The  brilliant  wed- 
ding festival  will  soon  come  to  be  regarded  as 
ridiculous,  then  unbecoming,  and  finally  immoral. 
And — like  other  survivals  of  the  time  when  mar- 
riage was  the  affair  of  the  family — it  has  already 
begun  to  disappear,  in  the  same  degree  as  love 
has  developed.  Lovers  are  less  and  less  inclined 
to  tolerate  a  spying  upon  their  finest  feelings; 
they  are  increasingly  anxious  to  rescue  these  from 


Love's  Freedom  131 

the  prying  fingers  of  society,  of  family,  and  of 
friends.  More  and  more  is  love  venerated  as  part 
of  nature's  mysticism,  whose  course  no  outsider 
can  determine,  whose  sensitive  manifestations 
and  uncertain  possibilities  no  one  may  disturb, 
a  mysticism  within  whose  sphere  a  fixed  time- 
table would  be  out  of  place. 

How  can  Love,  one  of  the  great  lords  of  life, 
take  its  freedom  from  the  hands  of  society  any 
more  than  Death,  the  other,  can  do  so?  "Love 
and  Death,  which  meet  like  the  two  sides  of  a 
mountain-ridge,  whose  highest  points  are  ever 
where  they  come  together"  (G.  Rodenbach); 
Love  and  Death,  which — one  with  the  wings 
of  the  dawn,  the  other  with  those  of  the  night 
sky — overshadow  the  portals  between  earthly 
life  and  the  two  great  darknesses  which  enclose 
it — only  these  two  powers  are  comparable  in 
majesty. 

But  while  there  is  only  one  death,  there  are 
many  sorts  of  love.  Death  never  plays.  When 
all  love  becomes  equally  serious,  it  will  also  pos- 
sess death's  right  to  choose  its  own  time. 


In  the  springtime  of  love,  parents  can  be  of 
significance  to  their  children  only  when  they  feel 
reverence  for  the  marvel  which  is  accomplished 
in  their  presence.  But  it  seldom  happens  that 
parents  have  previously  been  so  sensitive  that 


132  Love  and  Marriage 

their  children  then  treat  them  as  perfect  friends. 
The  period  of  youth  is  commonly  full  of  strife, 
which  is  brought  about  partly  by  the  parents' 
desire  of  remodelling  their  children  according 
to  their  own  ideas — against  which  children  are 
only  now  venturing  to  defend  themselves, — 
partly  by  the  children's  desire  to  assert  their 
own  ideals,  which  are  always  different  from  those 
of  the  parents,  for  otherwise  "  the  new  generation 
would  own  no  title  to  exist"  (G.  Brändes). 
Parents  might  save  for  themselves  and  for  their 
children  endless  suffering,  if  they  understood 
from  the  beginning  that  children  are  significant 
exclusively  as  new  personalities,  with  new  gods 
and  new  aims;  with  the  right  to  protect  their 
own  nature,  with  the  duty  of  finding  out  new 
paths,  without  forfeiting  the  right  of  being  re- 
spected by  their  parents  in  the  same  degree  as 
the  latter  on  their  side  retain  the  right  of  being 
venerated  by  their  children — for  the  best  of  what 
they  are  or  have  been,  what  they  will  or  have 
willed.  The  only  right  that  parents  ought  never 
to  renounce  in  dealing  with  their  grown-up  child- 
ren is  that  of  giving  to  them  the  benefit  of  their 
own  experience.  But  in  so  doing  they  must 
remember  what  a  poor  loving  heart  forgets 
easiest  of  all:  that  not  even  their  own  most  bitter 
experience  will  be  able  to  save  their  children 
from  making  sad  discoveries  for  themselves. 
They  will  probably  avoid  their  parents'  mistakes, 
but  only  to  make  others  of  their  own!    The  only 


Love's  Freedom  133 

real  power  a  father  or  mother  possesses  over  the 
child's  fate — but  indeed  this  is  an  immense  one — 
is  to  fill  the  home  with  his  or  her  strong  and  beau- 
tifvil  personality;  with  love  and  joy,  with  work 
and  culture;  and  thus  to  make  the  atmosphere 
so  rich  and  so  pure  that  the  children  may  calmly 
delay  their  choice  and  have  a  high  standard  to 
choose  by. 

But  if  parents  see  that  in  spite  of  this  their 
children  are  tempted  to  confuse  accident  with 
destiny,  then  they  are  called  upon  to  show  an 
almost  godlike  wisdom  in  order  to  divert  the 
danger.  In  most  cases,  parents  consciously  or 
unconsciously  play  into  the  hands  of  the  acci- 
dental, while  they  raise  obstacles  against  what 
is  predestined.  Their  warnings  are  not  directed 
against  what  is  silent  and  has  nothing  to  give; 
no,  they  advance  mean  and  paltry  reasons  which 
the  young  oppose  with  all  that  is  best  in  their 
nature.  Thus  they  silence  their  own  uneasy  in- 
tuitions, which  their  parents  might  have  induced 
them  to  follow  if  they  themselves  had  had  a 
clearer  perception  of  what  was  essential. 

Even  in  homes  where  there  is  most  affection, 
the  children,  in  their  stormy  period  of  springtime, 
are  as  riddles  which  their  parents  often  try  in 
vain  to  solve.  A  young  soul  never  suffers  so 
much  as  during  the  solution  of  its  own  riddle. 
But  only  such  a  father  or  mother  as  has  succeeded 
in  becoming  renewed  and  rejuvenated  through 
his  or  her  children  will  be  able  to  help  them  in 


134  Love  and  Marriage 

the  solution.  Otherwise  the  result  will  only  be 
that  the  parents  on  their  side  will  bring  stones 
to  the  wall  which  the  children  on  theirs  are 
building  ever  higher. 

Even  parents  who  have  not  grown  into  crabbed 
working-machines ;  who  do  not  use  their  authority 
because  they  have  the  means  of  power,  but  only 
because  they  possess  spiritual  superiority;  who 
in  their  home  let  their  children  have  not  only 
freedom  for  gladness  but  also  the  joy  of  freedom, 
will  nevertheless  many  a  time  fall  short  in  the 
endeavour  to  render  their  superiority  serviceable 
to  the  children,  or  by  their  broad-mindedness 
to  liberate  them  from  the  one-sidedness  of  youth. 
And  in  that  case  they  must  give  up  the 
struggle;  for  it  will  not  improve  the  difficulties 
of  the  present,  but  only  destroy  future  chances 
of  understanding. 

In  the  three  greatest  decisions  to  be  taken  in 
life — those  of  the  fundamental  view  of  life,  of 
one's  life  work,  and  of  love — each  soul  must  be 
its  own  counsel.  In  these  matters,  parents  must 
restrict  their  authority  to  saving  their  children 
from  vital  dangers;  but  they  must  also  be  able 
to  discover  such  dangers,  and  to  differentiate  pro- 
foimd  from  superficial  needs,  the  high-road  from 
the  by-road.  If  their  parents  are  not  capable 
of  this,  then  the  children  must  perform  their 
duty  to  themselves  and  to  life,  by  —  sooner  or 
later — going  their  own  way. 

If,  like  a  young  couple  in  a  similar  case,  the 


Love's  Freedom  135 

children  can  *' smile  and  be  silent/'  while  show- 
ing their  seriousness  in  their  actions,  then  they 
will  probably  be  capable  of  educating  their 
parents.  In  that  case,  it  will  frequently  be 
apparent  that  the  heart  of  a  father  or  mother 
was  stronger,  their  soul  greater  than  either  child 
or  parents  had  believed  before  the  test  was  made. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  should  prove  that  the 
faults  and  prejudices  of  the  parents  were  the 
sole  cause  of  the  conflict,  then  these  faults  and 
prejudices  are  not  entitled  to  any  more  respect 
because  they  are  those  of  a  father  or  mother. 

But  even  if  it  should  be  the  case  that  the  par- 
ents have  no  souls  capable  of  profound  feeling, 
but  only  hearts  which  can  bleed — it  is  nevertheless 
the  duty  of  the  child  towards  itself,  and  towards 
past  and  future  generations,  to  give  to  its  own 
nature  the  highest  possible  perfection  through 
love.  Parents  are  only  a  link  in  the  infinite  chain 
of  the  race:  it  is  the  blood  of  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands that  the  parents  have  transmitted  to  their 
children,  who  now  in  their  turn  are  to  pass  it  on. 
Children  have  higher  duties  towards  aU  these 
dead  and  unborn  beings  than  they  have  towards 
the  single  couple  who  became  their  father  and 
mother.  It  behooves  the  young  to  let  all  these 
dead  ones  live  again  as  fully  as  possible  through 
the  development  of  their  own  being  and  in  the 
blood  of  their  children.  A  human  being  may 
owe  a  greater  debt  of  gratitude  for  his  own  nature 
to  his  grandmother's  heart  or  to  his  grandfather's 


136  Love  and  Marriage 

imagination  than  to  his  own  narrow-hearted 
mother  or  unintelHgent  father.  So  far  is  it  from 
being  an  invariable  duty  to  bring  joy  to  the 
parents,  that  it  may  be  one's  duty  to  bring  them 
sorrow — in  order  to  bring  joy  to  one's  successors. 
It  is  a  good  thing  to  honour  one's  father  and 
mother;  but  the  commandment  which  Moses 
forgot  is  more  important  still:  to  honour  one's 
son  and  daughter  even  before  they  are  born. 

When  the  sense  of  the  dead  and  of  the  unborn 
becomes  a  conscious  motive  of  human  action, 
through  being  a  force  in  human  emotion,  then 
the  claim  of  the  parents  to  decide  their  children's 
life — as  well  as  the  claim  of  the  latter  to  decide 
that  of  their  parents — will  gradually  fall  to 
pieces  before  the  majesty  of  the  past  and  of  the 
future. 


It  results  from  the  foregoing  that  any  doctrine 
of  morality  is  of  little  worth  which  does  not  in- 
volve the  need  of  providing  the  means  of  marriage 
for  healthy  persons  between  the  ages  of  twenty 
and  thirty;  a  possibility  which  was  possessed 
without  exception  by  the  Germanic  ancestors 
whose  example  of  abstinence  is  now  appealed  to. 

So  long  as  increasingly  difficult  examinations, 
the  scale  of  pay  in  government  departments, 
the  division  of  profits  in  business,  and  the  general 
rate  of  living,  stand  in  the  way  of  young  people's 


Love's  Freedom  137 

chances  of  marriage,  things  will  remain  as  they 
are,  in  spite  of  an  increasing  minority  of  men 
who,  for  their  own  personality's  sake  or  for  that 
of  their  love,  maintain  abstinence  until  marriage 
or  remain  celibate. 

The  abolition  of  this  sacrifice  to  the  state  of 
society  and  civilisation  is  a  matter  of  sufficient 
importance  to  the  individual,  but  of  infinitely 
greater  importance  to  society,  whose  forces  are 
now  being  wasted  by  the  effects  of  immorality 
and  checked  by  those  of  morality :  society,  whose 
strength  depends  to  such  a  great  degree  upon 
young  and  healthy  parents  for  the  new  generation. 

Even  under  actual  conditions,  the  chances  of 
marriage  for  young  people  might  be  increased 
by  a  judicious  realisation  of  the  "own  home" 
idea  in  country  districts;  by  a  shortening  of  the 
university  course;  by  the  raising  of  salaries  in 
the  lower  ratings  (they  appear  at  present  to  be 
calculated  upon  the  satisfaction  of  sexual  needs 
through  prostitution) ;  by  the  granting  of  pensions 
at  an  earlier  age,  so  that  the  higher  rates  of  pay 
may  be  reached  in  middle  age — when  the  burden 
of  educating  children  is  heaviest; — and  by  in- 
creased exemption  from  taxation  for  men  and 
women  who  have  to  provide  for  a  family. 

In  addition,  a  thorough  change  in  social 
pretensions  and  habits  of  life  is  necessary, 
above  all  in  the  large  towns,  where  building 
societies  for  the  erection  of  small  flats  with 
common  kitchen,  ofiices  for  providing  domestic 


13S  Love  and  Marriage 

help,  paid  by  the  hour,  and  co-operative  societies 
for  the  cheaper  supply  of  the  necessaries  of  life, 
might  considerably  assist  young  people  in  estab- 
lishing their  homes.  It  is,  however,  not  only 
this,  but  also  communal  employment  that  must 
be  promoted,  if  men  of  about  twenty-five  are  to 
be  ready  to  enter  upon  their  various  occupations 
and — after  thirty-five  years  in  the  service  of  the 
State — to  be  entitled  to  their  pensions,  but  at 
the  same  time  under  the  obligation  to  retire, 
except  in  the  rare  cases  where  special  talent 
renders  a  person  indispensable  in  some  leading 
position.  The  experience  a  man  has  gained,  and 
the  strength  that  is  left  to  him,  would  find  full 
employment  in  other  social  affairs  or  in  personal 
interests. 

It  is  not  against  immoral  literature,  but  against 
the  Treasury,  the  Budget  Committee  and  against 
private  employers  of  labour  that  moral  reformers 
should  draw  up  their  resolutions.  So  long  as  a 
business  man  is  able  to  make  two  or  three  millions 
a  year  net  profit  while  of  those  employed  in  his 
office  scarcely  two  or  three  are  so  paid  that  they 
can  think  of  marriage  before  the  age  of  thirty; 
so  long  as  the  head  of  a  government  department 
can  reply,  to  the  application  of  a  class  of  officials 
for  an  increase  of  salary  in  order  to  facilitate 
marriage,  by  a  gracious  promise  of  more  frequent 
leave  to  go  to  town;  or  an  employer  refuse  a 
female  employee's  demand  for  a  raise  of  salary 
with  a  gallant  reference  to  the  ease  with  which — 


Love's  Freedom  139 

with  her  advantages  of  appearance — she  might 
increase  her  income;  so  long  will  the  marriage 
question  remain  unsolved. 


All  preaching  of  morality  to  youth  which  does 
not  at  the  same  time  condemn  the  state  of  society 
that  favours  immorality,  but^  makes  the  realisa- 
tion of  youthful  love  an  impossibility,  is  more 
than  stupidity,  it  is  a  crime. 

So  long  as  the  present  low  rates  of  pay  and 
uncertain  conditions  of  employment  continue, 
the  blood  of  men  will  continue  more  and  more 
to  be  corrupted,  and  that  of  women  to  be  im- 
poverished, while  waiting  for  the  marriage  which 
might  have  given  to  society  excellent  children 
born  of  healthy  and  happy  parents.  So  long  as 
societies  thus  fatuously  sacrifice  their  highest 
values  will  every  other  kind  of  social  reform  be 
nothing  but  a  work  of  Penelope,  of  which  the 
night  will  undo  what  the  day  has  done. 


CHAPTER  IV 
love's  selection 

In  the  foregoing  chapter  it  was  insisted  that 
love's  freedom  in  the  procreation  of  new  life 
must  have  a  downward  limit,  in  that  this  freedom 
can  only  be  allowed  to  those  who  have  attained 
the  age  of  sexual  maturity.  But  it  ought  also 
to  have  an  upward  limit,  since  a  great  difference  in 
age  between  father  and  mother — like  the  advanced 
age  of  one  of  them — offers  unfavourable  condi- 
tions for  the  health,  strength,  and  upbringing 
of  the  children.  And  as,  for  reasons  given  in  the 
last  chapter,  the  lawful  age  of  marriage  for  both 
sexes  must  be  put  at  twenty-one,  a  difference  in 
age  of  twenty -five  years  should  be  the  highest 
the  law  ought  to  allow  in  one  or  the  other  ca«?l. 

No  one  who  sees  the  meaning  of  life  in  its 
advance  towards  higher  forms  would  dispute 
nowadays  the  obvious  duty  of  not  transmitting 
serious  diseases  the  hereditariness  of  which  is 
already  ascertained  by  science.  But  as  this  has 
only  been  ascertained  in  a  few  cases,  legal  hind- 
rances as  regards  the  many  doubtful  cases  would 
be  not  only  a — perhaps  meaningless — interference 

140 


Love's  Selection  141 

with  the  life  of  the  individual,  but  also  an  un- 
favourable circumstance  for  continued  research 
in  the  most  important  branch  of  biology. 

What  ought  to  be  insisted  upon  even  now  is 
that  each  party  before  marriage  should  possess 
full  knowledge  of  its  possible  dangers,  but  that 
the  choice  should  thereupon  be  left  to  their 
own  sense  of  responsibility.  No  one — at  least 
not  yet — can  ask  the  individual  to  sacrifice  his 
happiness  for  contested  possibilities;  but  in  the 
interests  of  the  individual,  as  of  that  of  the 
race,  we  can,  on  the  other  hand,  demand  that 
no  one  shall  make  his  choice  in  love  in  ignorance. 
And  the  more  the  sense  of  racial  community 
approaches  its  renaissance  under  the  influence 
of  evolutionism,  the  more  natural  will  all  safe- 
guards appear  with  which  that  choice  may  be 
surroimded  to  the  advantage  of  posterity.  Even 
now  it  is  considered  quite  natural  that  a  medical 
examination  should  precede  life  insurance.  In 
the  future  it  may  be  equally  obvious  that  before 
marriage  the  woman  should  ascertain  from  a 
female  doctor  and  the  man  from  a  male  doctor 
whether  they  are  capable  of  fulfilling  their  duty 
to  the  race.  And  it  is  not  only  a  question  of  in- 
suring the  new  lives,  but  also  of  assuring  the  couple 
themselves  that  they  have  no  organic  defects 
which  in  some  instances  might  make  marriage 
impossible,  which  in  others  are  easily  avoidable, 
but  ignorance  regarding  which  would  in  each 
case  entail  unnecessary  suffering. 


142  Love  and  Marriage 

In  most  cases  it  is  the  anxiety  of  one's  self 
contracting  or  transmitting  diseases  to  the  other 
party  and  to  the  children  that  the  physician 
has  to  confirm  or  dispel.  It  is  beyond  all 
question  that  healthy  selfishness,  which  desires 
to  preserve  its  own  individuality,  as  well  as 
the  growing  appreciation  of  a  worthy  offspring, 
will  then  hinder  ma,ny  an  unsuitable  marriage. 
In  other  cases  love  might  triumph  over  these 
considerations  for  its  own  part,  the  married 
couple  abstaining,  however,  from  parentage. 
In  those  cases,  again,  where  the  law  would 
definitely  forbid  marriage,  this  would  doubtless 
be  no  hindrance  to  diseased  people  having  off- 
spring outside  wedlock.  But  the  same  is  true, 
of  course,  of  all  legal  enactments :  the  best  people 
do  not  require  them,  the  worst  do  not  obey  them, 
but  through  them  the  ideas  of  justice  of  the 
majority  are  cultivated. 

Only  those  who  are  ignorant  of  the  laws  of 
psychological  transformation  doubt  the  possi- 
bility of  the  simultaneous  enhancement  of  the 
feeling  of  love  and  the  racial  sense.  Century 
after  century  the  emotion  of  love  has  been  growing, 
while  at  the  same  time  men  have  nevertheless 
sacrificed  it  to  religious  prejudices,  superficial 
ideas  of  duty,  tyrannical  parental  authority, 
and  empty  forms.  Now,  when  the  sacrifice  is 
called  for  on  behalf  of  the  highest  of  possible 
gains — the  conquest  of  disease  by  health,  the 
ennobling  of  the  human  body  itself — now,  of  all 


Love's  Selection  143 

times,  it  is  asserted  that  mankind  would  be  in- 
capable of  this  sacrifice — because  in  the  course 
of  time  the  power  of  love  has  increased. 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  through  the  greatness 
of  their  feeHng  for  each  other  that  two  married 
people  can  bear  the  loss  of  children,  when — 
knowing  that  neither  of  them  thus  deprives  the 
race  of  a  material  asset — they  enter  upon  their 
union  with  the  resolve  not  to  become  parents. 
Through  the  same  greatness  in  their  love,  the 
party  on  whose  side  the  danger  lies  may  gain 
strength  to  sacrifice  individual  happiness  in 
order  that  the  other  may  gain  a  happiness  more 
significant  to  himself  and  to  the  race  with  some  one 
else.  Such  sacrifices  occur  even  now  more  fre- 
quently than  is  supposed. 

But  above  all  it  is  the  extension  of  the  instinct 
of  love  through  the  racial  sense  which  will  secure 
the  ennobling  of  the  race  without  sacrificing 
individual  happiness. 

The  point  of  view  of  racial  ennobling  found 
expression  even  in  the  Mosaic  marriage  law. 
In  ancient  Greece  also  this  ennobling  was  a 
conscious  factor.  But  Christianity's  insistence 
on  the  importance  of  the  individual  and  of  hu- 
manity weakened  the  feeling  of  the  individual 
for  the  race,  as  did  likewise  the  doctrine  of  souls 
supplied  to  the  bodies  from  heaven  and  returning 
thither.  It  was  only  through  the  enhancement 
of  man's  spiritual  force,  by  the  mortification  of 
his    sinful    body,    that    Christianity    raised    the 


144  Love  and  Marriage 

quality  of  the  race.  The  doctrine  of  hereditary 
sin  was  its  only — half -rational  and  half -irrational 
— insistence  on  our  connection  with  our  ancestors. 
Since  Christianity  regarded  the  human  species 
as  once  for  all  determined  by  God — though  bun- 
gled by  Adam — restoration,  not  new  creation, 
was,  as  already  stated,  its  fundamental  idea. 
In  the  very  conditions  of  the  renewal  of  life 
Christianity  saw  the  root  and  origin  of  sin  in 
the  world.  This  way  of  viewing  things  must  be 
entirely  overcome;  and  fortunately  the  church 
has  of  necessity  lost — and  will  continue  to  lose — 
in  every  conflict  with  love.  But  in  this  way  the 
advance  takes  place  by  a  turning-aside  from  the 
direct  line  of  development:  the  enhancement 
of  the  race.  At  the  present  time  many  symptoms 
show  that  love  and  the  racial  sense  are  beginning 
to  approach  one  another. 

Whenever  abstract,  logical  thought  confronts 
real  life  with  a  problem  that  admits  of  only  two 
solutions,  the  latter  asserts  its  proud  determina- 
tion not  to  allow  itself  to  be  confined  within  defini- 
tions or  ruled  by  deductions.  Life  is  movement, 
movement  implies  variability,  transformation,  in 
other  words,  development  in  an  upward  or  down- 
ward direction.  Never  will  the  upward  curve  as- 
sume a  more  pronounced  elevation  than  when  the 
desire  of  procreation  has  reached  the  point  at  which 
it  is  directed  by  the  selection  of  personal  love,  this 
selection  again  being  directed  by  a  clear-sighted 
instinct  tending  to  the  ennobling  of  the  race, 


Love's  Selection  145 

That  the  choice  of  personal  love  at  present 
appears  often  either  to  lack  or  to  oppose  this 
instinct,  is  no  proof  that  it  will  always  lack  or 
oppose  it.  Love's  selection  has  already  in  certain 
cases — such  as  those  of  near  blood-relations, 
different  races,  and  certain  diseases — become  an 
instinct,  since  law  and  custom  have  influenced 
selection  sufficiently  long  for  this  to  have  influ- 
enced feeling  and  instinct.  At  the  present  time 
brother  and  sister — since  they  are  aware  of  their 
relationship — seldom  have  to  suppress  a  mutual 
erotic  feeling,  as  such  a  thing  does  not  arise.  No 
prohibition,  but  only  all  the  impulses  of  her 
blood,  hinder  the  American  woman  from  marry- 
ing a  negro  or  a  Chinese.  The  woman  who  is 
known  to  have  epilepsy  is  excluded  from  marriage 
less  by  the  law,  in  this  case  easily  circumvented, 
than  by  the  fact  that  no  man  wants  her  as  his 
wife.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  known  that  under 
conditions  favourable  to  the  cultivation  of  the 
beauty  and  strength  of  the  human  body,  this 
has  in  a  great  degree  influenced  the  erotic  selec- 
tion of  either  sex — so  far  as  they  otherwise  pos- 
sessed freedom  of  choice.  The  law  of  inheritance, 
which  makes  it  easy  for  the  degenerate  to  contract 
marriage,  and  women's  need  of  maintenance  have, 
on  the  other  hand,  falsified  the  instinct  of  the 
latter  in  this  direction.  The  prevailing  customs 
and  ideas  of  morality  have  as  a  rule  deprived 
future  mothers  of  their  full  freedom  of  choice  and 
thus  to  a  great  extent  neutralised  the  importance 

to 


146  Love  and  Marriage 

of  womanly  love's  selection  for  the  spiritual  and 
bodily  improvement  of  the  race.  To  this  must 
be  added  that  the  Christian  doctrine  of  fraternity, 
the  eighteenth-century  doctrine  of  equality,  the 
transference  of  economical  power  to  the  third 
estate — in  a  word,  the  whole  democratisation  of 
society — have  broken  down  the  laws  and  customs 
which  prevented  the  mixing  of  blood  between 
different  classes  and  races.  This  has  certainly 
favoured  the  selection  of  personal  love,  but  at 
the  same  time,  to  a  greater  extent  than  formerly, 
it  has  favoured  a  selection  governed  by  pecuniary 
considerations.  In  the  marriages  which  were 
formerly  a  matter  of  family  arrangement,  many 
other  advantages,  besides  those  of  money,  were 
taken  into  consideration.  But  in  this  case  also, 
as  in  that  of  the  marriage  of  near  relations,  it 
was  less  and  less  a  clear-sighted  solicitude  to 
preserve  noble  blood,  more  and  more  an  empty 
pride  of  birth,  a  narrow  race-prejudice,  that  raised 
obstacles  to  marriage.  It  was  thus  necessary  for 
love's  selection  to  conquer  these  obstructions, 
which  in  addition,  even  from  the  point  of  view  of 
racial  enhancement,  were  often  of  doubtful  value. 
But  all  the  more  must  we  deplore  the  influence 
of  money  in  determining  matrimonial  selection, 
above  all  when  this  influence  makes  itself  felt  at 
the  cost  of  the  inclination  which  love  shows, 
in  spite  of  everything,  of  making  its  choice 
by  preference  among  equals;  an  inclination 
which — besides  other  easily  explicable  causes  — 


Love's  Selection  147 

may  also  imply  an  instinct  developed  in  the 
course  of  generations,  tending  to  the  preser- 
vation of  the  best  peculiarities  in  a  class  or  a 
race. 

Since  Christianity  and  the  civilisation  influ- 
enced by  it  modestly  veiled  the  natural  mission 
of  love  and  obscured  it  by  transcendentalism, 
mankind  began  to  be  ashamed  even  of  self- 
examination  or  self- confession  in  this  relation. 
We  ought  again  to  pay  attention  to  family  history, 
though  not  to  such  as  used  to  be  recorded  in  old 
family  Bibles,  with  the  dates  of  birth,  marriage, 
and  death,  but  such  a  history  as  should  include 
the  circumstances  which  determined  birth  and 
death.  We  must  resume  the  casting  of  horo- 
scopes, but  not  so  much  according  to  the  signs 
in  the  heavens — although  perhaps  these  will 
regain  something  of  their  former  importance — 
as  according  to  those  on  earth ;  and  not  only  from 
the  signs  at  birth  but  from  those  long  previous 
to  it.  Just  as  alchemy  became  chemistry  and 
astrology  led  to  astronomy,  it  is  possible  that 
such  a  reading  of  signs  might  prepare  the  way 
for  what  we  may  call — while  waiting  for  a  word 
of  more  extended  meaning  than  Galton's  eugenics 
or  Haeckel'sontogony — erotoplastics:  the  doctrine 
of  love  as  a  consciously  formative  art,  instead  of 
a  blind  instinct  of  procreation.  It  would  be  of 
infinitely  greater  significance  for  humanity  if 
the  majority  of  the  women,  who  now  translate 
their    expedences    into    half-candid    and   wholly 


148  Love  and  Marriage 

inartistic  fiction,  were  to  write  down  for  "the 
benefit  of  science  entirely  true  family  chronicles 
and  perfectly  frank  confessions. 

It  is  certain  even  now  that  the  customs  and 
ways  of  thought,  the  artistic  and  emotional 
tendencies,  which  make  up  the  atmosphere  of 
love,  unconsciously  operate  upon  its  selection 
to  the  advantage  of  the  race.  This  also  involves 
the  possibility  of  such  influence  becoming  con- 
scious, when  once  it  is  clearly  seen  in  what  direc- 
tion it  ought  to  go,  which  are  the  spiritual  and 
bodily  properties  that  it  is  desired  to  eradicate 
or  to  enhance,  and  by  what  means  the  properties 
of  the  new  generation  may  depend  upon  the  choice 
of  parents.  But  above  all,  racial  considerations 
will  operate  indirectly  in  the  same  direction,  so 
that  love  will  be  less  and  less  likely  to  arise  under 
conditions  unfavourable  to  the  race.  Man  is 
not  inwardly  a  logical  creature:  les  entrailles  ne 
raisonnent  pas,  elles  ne  sont  pas  faites  pour  ga 
(George  Sand).  But  by  degrees  our  nature 
becomes  unconsciously  transformed  through  re- 
ciprocal influences:  the  body  together  with  the 
soul,  the  soul  together  with  the  body;  the  desires 
through  the  thoughts,  the  thoughts  through  the 
desires.  It  is  true  that  love's  selection  will 
always  remain  a  mystery — from  this  among  many 
other  causes,  equally  or  more  important.  But 
the  individual  and  universal  qualities  which 
in  the  main  act  as  an  attraction  will  gradually 
be  more  clearly   perceived,   more  sought   after 


Love's  Selection  149 

by  both  sexes,   and  will  have  more  weight  in 
determining  their  choice. 

We  have  already  seen  that  a  displacement  of 
motives,  a  division  of  motive  power,  has  during 
a  certain  period  altered  the  character  of  love. 
Thus,  as  pointed  out  above,  the  influence  of  the 
spirit  of  the  age  was  able  during  the  age  of  chiv- 
alry, and  again  during  the  eighteenth  century, 
to  separate  love  both  from  marriage  and  from 
the  mission  of  the  race.  By  the  same  psychic 
process  a  new  spirit  of  the  age — full  of  the  aspira- 
tions of  evolution  and  determined  by  the  religion 
of  life — may  restore  this  connection  and  make 
it  closer  than  ever  before.  Then  will  mankind 
look  for  a  new  Blake  to  glorify  the  feeling  of  de- 
votion which  fills  hearts  and  souls  at  the  coin- 
ciding selection  of  personal  love  and  of  the  racial 
sense,  a  coincidence  which  alone  gives  the  cer- 
tainty that 

I  am  for  you,  and  you  are  for  me, 
Not  only  for  our  own  sake,  but  for  others'  sakes, 
Envelop 'd  in  you  sleep  greater  heroes  and  bards, 
They  refuse  to  awake  at  the  touch  of  any  man  but  me.  * 

Religion,  poetry,  art,  and  social  custom  have 
collaborated  to  elevate  the  racial  feeling  into 
love.  They  ought  now  to  collaborate  again  to 
make  the  racial  feeling  conscious  in  love.  The 
altars  that  the  ancients  raised  to  the  divinities 
of  procreation  must  be  rebuilt.     Not  for  men 

'  Walt  Whitman. 


ISO  Love  and  Marriage 

and  women  to  assemble  around  them  in  frenzied 
orgies,  in  the  red  glow  of  sunset,  but  in  the  golden 
light  of  the  morning  and  the  joy  of  creative  day. 

Family  feeling,  ancestor-worship,  pride  of  pure 
blood  will  regain,  in  a  new  sense,  their  decisive 
power  over  emotions  and  actions. 

Thus  will  love's  freedom  be  limited — but  not 
through  idealistic  philosophy's  abstract  concep- 
tions of  citizenship  and  duty,  nor  yet  through 
the  hard-and-fast  breeding  rules  of  a  Spartan 
evolutionism. 

Freedom  for  love's  selection^  under  conditions 
favourable  to  the  race;  limitatio7i  of  the  freedom^ 
not  of  love,  hut  of  procreation,  when  the  conditions 
are  unfavourable  to  the  race — this  is  the  line  of  life. 

Love,  like  every  other  emotion,  has  its  ebb 
and  flow.  Thus,  even  in  the  greatest  souls,  it  is 
not  always  at  the  same  height.  But  the  greater 
the  soul  that  the  wave  of  erotic  emotion  inun- 
dates, the  more  surely  does  this  wave  quiver 
at  its  highest  with  the  longing  of  eternity.  The 
child  is  the  only  true  answer  to  this  longing. 

This  does  not  mean  that  lovers  in  the  moments 
of  rapture  divide  their  consciousness  between 
the  present  and  the  future,  between  their  own 
bliss  and  the  possible  child.  The  life  of  the  soul 
does  not  work  so  awkwardly  as  this.  But  the 
conscious  conditions  of  the  soul  are  determined 
by  emotions — reduced  for  the  moment  to  uncon- 
sciousness; and  motives,  which  are  forgotten 
in    the   hour   of   fulfilment,    have   not    therefore 


Love's  Selection  151 

been  less  decisive.  The  athlete  in  the  moment 
of  victory  does  not  remember  the  training  which 
preceded  his  race,  but  it  was  nevertheless  that 
which  decided  the  fate  of  that  moment.  The 
artist  in  the  hour  of  creation  does  not  remember 
the  toil  of  his  student  years,  but  that  nevertheless 
determines  the  perfection  of  his  creation.  The 
will  to  ennoble  the  race  need  not  be  conscious 
in  a  pair  of  lovers,  who  in  each  other  forget  time 
and  existence,  but  without  the  emotions,  which, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  have  been  influenced 
by  that  will,  they  would  not  be  united  in  an 
ecstasy  of  the  soul  and  the  senses. 


Young  men^  are  becoming  increasingly  con- 
scious that  the  thought  of  the  child  influenced  them 
in  their  choice  of  love;  women  are  increasingly 
aware  that  never  was  their  longing  for  a  child 
stronger  than  in  the  embrace  of  the  man  to  whom 
they  have  been  attracted  by  a  great  love.  More 
and  more  often  do  mothers  search  the  features 
and  souls  of  their  children  for  evidence  of  their 
love.  More  and  more  often  does  one  hear  the 
unmiarried  woman  confess  the  hungry  longing 
for  motherhood,  which  a  few  decades  ago  she 
concealed  as  a  shame. 

Every  awakened  soul  perceives  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  time  comprehends  the  mis- 
sion of  the  race  with  a  new  intensity,  although 


152  Love  and  Marriage 

centuries  must  pass  before  it  can  be  proved  what 
influence  love's  free  selection  has  had  upon  the 
production  of  beings  above  the  present  standard 
of  humanity. 

Even  from  believers  in  the  religion  of  life 
warnings  are  still  heard  against  th2  love  which 
is  a  matter  of  personal  choice,  which  excludes 
all  else,  and  which  dissolves  all  former  ties. 
Evolutionists  thus  admit  that  this  emotion  cer- 
tainly produces  in  the  individual  the  highest 
possible  development  of  force,  the  fullest  richness 
of  life,  and  that  this  indirectly  and  in  many  ways 
is  to  the  good  of  the  whole.  But  at  the  same 
time  they  assert  that  love  itself  often  consumes 
these  enhanced  powers;  that  it  ought  therefore 
only  to  occupy  a  brief  period  of  human  life  and 
should  not  be  allowed  any  decisive  importance  in 
shaping  the  course  of  life,  since  this  would  be  to 
the  detriment  of  the  new  generation.  Their 
special  objection  to  love  is,  that  just  as  monastic 
life  and  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy  during  the 
Middle  Ages  and  down  to  the  present  day  have 
deprived  the  race  of  excellent  qualities — since 
the  most  gifted  often  choose  the  calm  of  the 
cloister  or  the  call  of  the  priesthood — so  now 
many  of  the  best  men  and  women  are  kept  from 
marriage  by  the  dream  or  by  the  loss  of  a  great 
love's  happiness. 

Finally,  from  the  point  of  view  of  evolution- 
ary ethics,  not  only  the  desire  of  great  love,  ex- 
cluding all  else,  but  monogamy  itself  has  been 


Love's  Selection  153 

attacked.  This  purely  scientific  line  of  thought 
has  at  present  no  conscious  part  in  the  utterances 
of  what  is  called  the  "new  immorality,"  all  the  less 
as  the  scientific  reasoning  lays  stress  upon  the 
point  that  if  mankind  is  to  abandon  monogamy, 
which  has  possessed  such  enormous  advantages, 
then  this  must  be  done  with  a  conscious  purpose, 
to  further  the  development  of  the  whole  race, 
not  the  passions  of  individuals. 

But  if  this  evolutionistic  reasoning  be  conceded, 
then  it  will  result  in  a  transformation  of  society's 
view  of  love's  freedom  of  choice,  both  in  the 
direction  of  extension  and  of  limitation.  Much 
of  what  is  now  called  the  '*new  immorality"  may 
then  appear  as  the  unconscious  self -protection 
of  the  race  against  a  degeneration  forced  upon 
it  by  the  customs  and  arrangements  of  society. 


Against  the  future  claims  of  evolutionism, 
however,  the  conviction  asserts  itself  that  per- 
sonal love,  the  great  creation  of  culture,  will  not 
disappear;  and  thereby  the  danger  of  polygamy 
is  removed.  It  must  therefore  continue  to  be 
love's  selection  which  will  occasion  the  ethical 
"adulteries"  just  alluded  to,  but  it  will  be  a  love 
determined  by  the  point  of  view  of  the  ennobling 
of  the  race.  At  present  the  claims  of  evolution  in 
this  respect  have  scarcely  begun  to  be  perceived, 
still   less   have   they  succeeded   in   exercising  a 


154  Love  and  Marriage 

transforming  influence  on  moral  opinion,  which 
will  perhaps  one  day  apply  in  this  connection 
Plato's  saying :  that  what  is  useful  is  fit,  and  what 
is  hurtful  is  shameful.  Where  good  reasons  exist 
for  not  outwardly  dissolving  the  marriage,  the 
right  may  perhaps  be  admitted  which  even  now 
a  man  or  woman  has  here  and  there  appropriated : 
that  of  becoming  a  father  by  another  woman,  or 
a  mother  by  another  man,  since  they  themselves 
have  a  passionate  longing  for  a  child  and  are 
eminently  suited  for  parentage,  but  have  been 
deprived  of  its  joys  because  the  wife  or  husband 
has  been  wanting  in  these  possibilities. 

Even  now  people  begin  to  perceive  the  psycho- 
logical justification  of  the  oft-repeated  experience 
that  a  man — sometimes  also  a  woman — can  at 
the  same  time  and  in  a  different  way  love  more 
than  one,  since  the  great  love,  the  love  which  is 
one  and  indivisible  and  pervades  their  whole 
being  for  ever,  has  not  been  given  to  them.  Even 
now  such  conflicts  are  solved  in  a  new  way — 
there  are  examples  of  it  known  throughout 
Europe — not  as  Luther  solved  it  for  Philip  of 
Hesse,  who  kept  the  wife  that  had  just  borne  him 
a  ninth  child,  while  secretly  wedding  a  new  one, 
but  as  Goethe  first  intended  to  bring  about  the 
solution  in  Stella:  that  the  wife,  without  any  open 
rupture,  should  step  aside;  that  the  devotion, 
the  tenderness  of  memories,  which  united  her  and 
her  husband,  should  still  render  possible  their 
meeting  now  and  then  as  friends,  in  a  common 


Love's  Selection  155 

care  for  their  children,  although  the  husband  had 
contracted  a  new  matrimonial  relation  to  another 
woman. 

From  the  children's  point  of  view  such  a  solu- 
tion may  come  to  be  looked  upon  in  the  future 
as  more  desirable — and  more  worthy  of  respect — • 
than  it  seems  now. 


The  new  sexual  morality — ^where  the  light,  as  in 
Correggio's  Night,  will  radiate  from  the  child — ■ 
may,  however,  continue  to  uphold  single  love  as 
the  ideal  for  the  highest  happiness  and  develop- 
ment both  of  the  lovers  and  of  the  children.  It 
has  already  been  contended  that  this  is  the  direc- 
tion in  which  the  evolution  of  love  is  moving. 
But  we  must  likewise  admit — and  always  for 
the  well-being  of  the  race  as  well  as  of  the  in- 
dividual— that  love  may  take  lower  as  well  as 
higher  forms  without  our  being  obliged  to  regard 
the  former  as  immoral.  When  the  point  of  view 
of  the  ennobling  of  the  race  has  penetrated  the 
ethical  ideas  of  mankind,  the  following  may  be 
described  as  immoral,  with  a  force  at  present 
unsuspected : 

All  parentage  without  love; 

All  irresponsible  parentage; 

All  parentage  of  immature  or  degenerate  persons; 

All  voluntary  sterility  of  married  people  fitted  for 
the  mission  of  the  race;  and  finally 


156  Love  and  Marriage 

All  such  manifestations  of  sexual  life  as  involve 
violence  or  seduction,  and  entail  unwillingness  or 
incapacity  to  fulfil  the  mission  of  the  race. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  society  will  admit, 
with  a  freedom  wholly  different  from  that  now 
existing,  the  union  of  people,  not  only  in  their 
best  years,  but  also  in  their  best  feelings;  it  will 
perceive  the  present  hindrances  to  be  an  injustice 
which  falls  not  only  upon  the  individuals  but 
upon  society  itself — since  connubial  unhappiness 
not  only  interferes  with  the  highest  development 
of  many  people's  powers  for  the  good  of  all, 
but  it  also  deprives  society  of  the  children  to 
whom  life  might  have  been  given  by  a  new  happi- 
ness. 

It  is  through  its  view  of  the  social  importance 
of  love's  selection  that  the  new  morality  will  be  a 
transforming  force. 

That  a  pioneer  of  reform  who  puts  his  ideas 
into  practice  may  be  a  dangerous  example  is 
certain.  It  is  possible  to  be  fully  convinced 
of  the  future  of,  for  instance,  the  art  of  flying, 
without  therefore  denying  the  dangers  of  experi- 
ment or  encouraging  people  to  jump  off  church- 
towers  with  nothing  but  a  pair  of  goose-wings 
on  their  shoulders. 

No  thorough  reshaping  of  emotions  and  cus- 
toms takes  place  according  to  dogmas  and  pro- 
grammes; this  one  least  of  all.  But  no  other 
motive  power  exists  which  will  finally  induce  all — 
the  small  and  the  great,  the  weak  and  the  strong — 


Love's  Selection  157 

to  follow  the  line  of  development,  except  the  in- 
creased freedom  of  choice  of  personal  love,  with 
a  correspondingly  increased  certainty  as  regards 
the  influence  of  that  choice  upon  the  welfare  of 
the  race.  For  unless  love  continued  to  be  the  con- 
dition of  morality,  the  cause  of  selection,  the  new 
humanity  would  gradually  lose  advantages  already 
gained.  Neither  the  ''breeding  institute"  nor 
*' freedom  of  pairing"  is  capable  of  enhancing 
the  spiritual  and  bodily  resources  of  mankind  in 
a  universal,  permanent,  and  organic  way.  Love 
alone  can  do  this. 

It  is  true  that  it  has  yet  to  be  proved  that  love — 
other  conditions  being  equal — produces  the  best 
children.     But  this  will  one  day  be  proved. 

This  knowledge  is  for  the  present  only  intuition. 
But  so  are  all  truths  in  the  beginning.  Moreover, 
possibilities  of  indirect  proof  are  not  wanting 
even  now.  First  and  foremost  this,  that  love 
has  not  its  origin  in  human  life,  and  is  not  a 
product  of  civilisation,  but  shows  itself  already 
in  the  animal  world.  Among  animals  it  is 
capable  of  resulting  in  death  from  sorrow  at  the 
loss  of  a  mate,  as  also  in  other  emotional  phe- 
nomena of  human  life.  It  may  even  lead  to 
monogamy,  although  with  animals  as  with  human 
beings  monogamy  is  neither  a  necessary  result 
of  love  nor  an  indispensable  condition  of  develop- 
ment. For  many  of  the  higher  species  of  animals 
are  polygamous,  while  others,  below  them  in  the 
scale,  are  monogamous.     If  love  did  not  involve 


158  Love  and  Marriage 

any  great  advantage,  it  might  doubtless  have 
arisen,  but  would  not  have  persisted,  in  the  face 
of  the  hindrances  which  its  personal  selection 
appears  to  put  in  the  way  of  the  maintenance 
of  the  race.  Mankind  has  thus  already  brought 
the  emotion  of  love  from  its  primitive  animal 
stem  and  grafted  it  upon  the  tree  of  civilisation. 
It  has  gradually  been  ennobled  and  exalted  into 
one  of  the  highest  powers  of  human  life.  And 
how  would  this  growing  importance  of  love  be 
possible,  if  it  enhanced  only  the  happiness  of  the 
individual,  and  not  also  the  life  of  the  race? 

The  evolution  of  human  love  has  shown  itself 
partly  in  an  increasingly  definite  individualisation 
in  selection,  partly  in  a  more  complete  admission 
and  enhancement  of  individual  qualities. 

In  other  words:  personal  characteristics  have 
tended  more  and  more  to  inspire  love,  and  love 
has  more  and  more  developed  personal  char- 
acteristics. This  again — as  already  admitted — 
has  resulted  in  more  and  more  individuals  failing 
to  perform  their  duty  to  the  race,  either  because 
their  feeling,  although  reciprocated,  could  not 
lead  to  marriage,  or  because  the  feeling  in  some 
respect  or  other  has  been  disappointed.  This 
passionate  selection  of  a  single  one  among  the 
many  by  whom — from  an  objective  point  of 
view — the  duty  to  the  race  might  equally  well 
have  been  performed,  has  thus  in  a  sense  become 
anti-social. 

But  such  lives,  wasted  as  they  are  from  the 


Love's  Selection  159 

immediate  point  of  view  of  the  ennobling  of  the 
race,  have  yet  been  able  to  serve  the  same  end 
indirectly.  Many  of  these  persons,  childless  in 
an  ordinary  sense,  have  left  immortal  offspring. 
Others  have  shed  upon  the  battle-field,  in  winning 
victories  for  humanity,  the  blood  which  they  never 
saw  flowing  in  the  fine  network  of  veins  on  a  child's 
temples.  By  the  greatness  of  their  own  ideals 
they  have  enlarged  the  hearts  of  their  fellow-men ; 
and  their  courage  has  not  had  to  sink  before  the 
possibility  of  their  own  failure  to  realise  their 
ideals  being  cast  in  their  teeth.  They  have 
bought  their  prophetic  power  at  the  highest  possi- 
ble price :  that  of  never  having  had  a  happiness  to 
lose ;  and  they  bear  without  bitterness  the  poverty 
which  has  made  them  richer  in  faith. 

That  many  lives — and  worthy  lives — are  wasted 
through  love  is  only  one  manifestation  of  lifers 
impenetrable  tendency  to  universal  prodigality. 
It  is  one  with  the  great  necessity,  whose  hand 
smites  and  wounds  us  so  long  as  we  curse  it, 
but  caresses  and  supports  as  soon  as  we  bless  it. 

We  must  not  look  at  the  victims — even  if  we 
ourselves  are  among  them — if  we  would  see  the 
meaning  of  life  in  life  itself.  We  must  fix  our 
eyes  upwards.  And  then  it  is  certain — since  love 
continually  and  in  spite  of  all  is  extending  its 
power — that  individual  love,  with  all  its  victims 
and  all  its  mistakes,  nevertheless  in  the  long 
run  assists  the  elevation  of  the  race. 


i6o  Love  and  Marriage 

The  great  Western  prophet  of  pessimism  argued 
that  love  was  nothing  but  a  task  imposed  in 
this  fashion  upon  the  individual  by  der  Genius 
der  G  att  ung;  that  only  contradictions  attract 
one  another  and  that  the  offspring  inherits  the 
complementary  qualities  that  each  has  sought 
in  the  other.  These  contradictions — through  the 
hostility  of  which  the  parents  afterwards  make 
each  other  unhappy — coalesce  and  neutralise 
each  other  in  the  child,  so  that  the  latter,  at  the 
expense  of  its  parents,  becomes  a  well-equipped, 
rich,  or  harmonious  personality.  Carried  to  an 
extreme,  this  saying  of  Schopenhauer's,  like  many 
other  such  pregnant  thoughts,  becomes  an  ab- 
surdity. But  every  one  who  has  observed  love 
must  have  found — long  before  he  knows,  or 
without  ever  knowing,  that  this  experience  is 
exalted  into  pessimism — that  all  powerful  love 
arises  between  opposed  natures.  The  harmony 
that  results  from  similarity  is  monotonous,  poor, 
and  moreover  dangerous  to  the  development  of 
the  individual,  as  well  as  that  of  the  race.  But 
what  is  contrary  is  certainly  not  always  conflicting, 
although  it  may  prove  so  if  the  contrariness 
extends  to  views  of  life  and  its  purpose,  its  value 
and  conduct.  Conflicting  natures  are — in  spite 
of  Schopenhauer — not  unfrequently  equally  un- 
favourable for  the  child's  disposition  and  for  its 
bringing-up,  and  the  will  of  the  race  often  fails 
of  its  purpose  through  their  very  compulsion  to 
unite  in  a  love  which  is  soon    turned  to  hatred. 


Love's  Selection  i6i 

Again,  contrary  nattires  often  become  conflicting, 
owing  to  their  turning  the  wrong  side  of  their 
quaHties  to  each  other  after  marriage,  while  in 
the  early  period  of  love  they  had  shown  each 
other  the  right  side  of  these  qualities.  That  such 
a  marriage  is  unhappy  is  no  evidence  against 
love's  selection,  but  a  great  one  for  mankind's 
lack  of  culture  for  marriage.  That  every  sym- 
pathetic dissimilarity  between  persons  has  a 
limit,  the  overstepping  of  which  leads  further 
and  further  towards  antipathetic  dissimilarities, 
is  a  psychological  lesson  which  is  deeply  incul- 
cated by  marriage. 

The  more,  however,  the  art  of  living  is  de- 
veloped, the  more  will  human  beings  be  able  to 
minimise  their  own  loss  of  happiness  through 
this  selection  of  love  to  the  advantage  of  the  race; 
for  married  people  will  come  more  and  more  to 
delight  in  and  preserve  each  other's  differences; 
to  restrain  the  antipathetic  contradictions  in 
themselves;  to  make  more  conscious  use  of  the 
sympathetic  dissimilarities  in  the  other  for  the 
completion  of  their  own  one-sidedness ;  to  cease 
from  the  endeavour,  so  hostile  to  happiness,  of 
reforming  the  other  according  to  their  own  nature. 
Even  now,  moreover,  the  need  of  sympathy  in 
love  is  so  awakened,  so  sensitive,  that  the  blind 
passion  aroused  by  external  contradictions  is  less 
and  less  able  to  overmaster  it.  The  need  of  sym- 
pathy is  now  quickly  w^arned  when  it  encounters 
the  irreconcilable  contradictions  which  show  that 


1 62  Love  and  Marriage 

each  is  on  a  different  plane  of  existence ;  that  each 
belongs  to  a  different  psychological  period  or 
continent  or  race.  This  perception  even  now 
checks  the  development  of  love  in  many  cases, 
where  the  contradiction  really  is  a  conflicting 
incompatibility,  and  not  the  elective  affinity 
determined  by  nature  into  which  enter  both 
primary  dissimilarities  and  secondary  similarities. 
The  latter  results  in  the  lovers'  contradictions 
forming  a  rich  harmony,  both  in  their  own  life 
together  and  in  the  personalities  of  their  children. 
When  this  attraction  of  contradictions  has  once 
missed  its  mark,  one  still  often  sees  that  it  is 
one  and  the  same  type  that  a  person  will  love 
a  second  or  third  time,  or  even  oftener,  with  a 
persistence  of  selection  which  makes  it  true  in  a 
way  that  the  object  of  love  has  all  the  time  been 
the  same  woman  or  man. 

The  relentless  force  of  nature's  uniting  will 
shows  itself  not  only  in  the  way  love  brings  to- 
gether contradictions  in  marriage,  but  also  in 
the  rupture  of  marriage.  A  good  wife,  married 
to  a  good  husband,  loving  and  loved,  is  thus  seized 
by  a  passion,  incomprehensible  to  herself,  for 
another  man.  Without  reflection  she  gives  her- 
self up  to  her  passion,  to  return  again  to  the 
husband  she  has  not  ceased  to  love,  but  who  never 
inspired  in  her  the  overmastering  emotion  whose 
purpose — according  to  the  will  of  nature  and  of 
the  woman  herself — ought  to  have  been  a  child. 
The  same  will  of  nature  manifests  itself  in  a 


Love's  Selection  163 

number  of  phenomena,  incomprehensible  to  others. 
An  intellectual  man  or  woman  is  seized  by  a 
passion  for  a  person  far  inferior.  How  often 
has  not  a  ''good-looking  fellow"  vanquished  the 
most  high-souled  man  in  the  affections  of  such  a 
woman;  how  often  have  not  thoughtless  beauty 
and  empty  gaiety  won  from  a  superior  man  what 
the  personality  of  an  exceptional  woman  could 
not  secure!  The  whole  secret  was  nature's  will 
to  counterbalance  cerebral  and  nervous  genius 
by  healthy,  sensuous  strength,  to  the  advantage 
of  the  race.  As  sexual  love  has  its  origin  in  the 
fact  that  the  sexual  characters,  which  biologically 
are  favourable  to  the  race,  are  the  most  attractive, 
this  general  attraction  constantly  operates  side 
by  side  with  the  individual;  and  it  operates 
most  strongly  precisely  in  that  kind  of  love  which 
is  rightly  called  "blind  passion,"  the  kind  which 
thus  brings  together  to  their  misfortune  conflict- 
ing contradictions. 

But  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  love's 
selection  in  this  case  will  be  able  to  retain  its 
instinctive  sureness,  although  love  is  continually 
widening  its  instincts  of  psychical  sympathy  also. 
The  consequence  of  this  is  that  the  number 
of  contradictions  which  may  attract  will  become 
less,  but  on  the  other  hand  the  fewer  possibil- 
ities will  be  more  finely  adapted;  that  the  selec- 
tion among  contradictions  will  thus  become  more 
and  more  difficult  but  at  the  same  time  more 
and   more   valuable.     Love's   selection   now  not 


164  Love  and  Marriage 

infrequently  has  for  its  result  that,  of  two  contra- 
dictions, irresistibly  united  by  the  affinity  of  souls, 
one  or  both  does  not  offer  the  best  physical 
conditions  for  children.  But  to  make  up  for  this 
the  selection  may  turn  out  excellently  for  the 
enhancement  of  a  particular  disposition,  the  form- 
ation of  a  harmonious  temperament,  or  the  fos- 
tering of  a  great  spiritual  quality.  It  is  not 
only  by  avoirdupois  and  yard-measure  that  the 
advance  of  the  race  must  be  tested. 

Such  a  race-enhancing  selection  may,  for 
example,  take  place  through  the  tendency  of 
young  women  of  the  present  day  to  feel  or  retain 
love  less  and  less  for  a  man  who  is  erotically 
divided,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  men  who 
have  preserved  unity  in  their  love  have  more  and 
more  prospect  of  being  attractive  to  women. 
Thus,  generation  after  generation,  erotic  unity 
may  become  more  and  more  natural  with  men, 
as  in  the  same  way  it  has  become  so  with  women. 
Man's  desire  for  woman's  purity  has  determined 
his  choice,  and  this  choice  has  then  through 
heredity  further  advanced  the  feelings  of  the 
next  generation,  until  these  have  become  the 
strongest  in  his  erotic  instincts.  The  clearest 
consciousness  of  the  injustice  of  the  different 
moral  demands  on  man  and  woman;  the  most 
"liberal"  view  of  woman's  right  to  the  same 
freedom  as  man,  are  in  this  case  unable  to  van- 
quish his  instincts.  When  a  man  learns  that  the 
woman  he   loves   has   given  herself   to   another 


Love's  Selection  165 

before  him,  or  that  he  shares  her  with  another, 
his  feeHng  often  becomes  diseased  at  its  root: 
the  will  of  sole  possession  that  has  grown  up  in 
him  through  the  love-selection  of  thousands  of 
years,  and  has  now  been  further  heightened  by 
the  desire  for  unity  of  individual  love. 

These  indications  may  be  enough  to  show  the 
superficiality  of  the  conclusions  about  love's 
selection  which  are  confined  exclusively  to  physical 
improvement,  although  naturally  this  also  is  of 
great  value.  But  that  a  pair  of  lovers  can  have 
a  feeble-bodied  child  ought  in  itself  to  be  no 
more  used  as  evidence  against  love's  selection 
than  would  be  the  physically  excellent  children 
of  an  unhappy  couple. 

Even  if  the  erotic  attraction  of  dissimilarities 
is  thus  the  strongest  proof  of  the  probability  of 
love's  influence  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
enhancement  of  the  race,  it  is  nevertheless  far 
from  being  the  only  one.  Another  is  the  astonish- 
ing excess  of  first-born  or  only  children  among  dis- 
tinguished personalities  in  different  departments. 
A  third  is  the  proverbial  ability  of  so-called 
*' love-children. "  A  fourth,  the  result,  often 
favourable  to  the  disposition  of  the  children, 
of  marriages  between  people  of  different  nation- 
alities. In  the  first  two  cases  w^e  may  suppose 
that  the  parents'  happiness  in  love — or  at  least 
their  sensual  passion — was  at  the  height  of  its 
freshness  and  strength  at  the  conception  of  the 
child.     In  the  case  of  "love-children"  it  is  not 


i66  Love  and  Marriage 

unfrequently  a  healthy  woman  of  the  people  who 
with  genuine  devotion  encounters  the  sensual 
desire  of  a  man  intellectually  her  superior.  In 
the  last  case,  again,  it  is  usually  a  powerful  love 
which  has  conquered  the  obstructions  raised  by 
patriotism  and  traditions  against  the  attraction 
by  means  of  which  the  national  contradictions 
are  to  be  blended  in  the  child  into  a  happy  unity. 

Observation  in  this  connection  is  misled  by 
innumerable  side  influences,  counteractions,  and 
contradictions  as  yet  unsolved.  So  long  as  any 
wreck  of  humanity  is  allowed  by  ''the  right  of 
love"  to  reproduce  the  species,  the  lines  of  con- 
clusion in  this  subject  will  continue  to  intersect 
one  another  in  all  directions.  Not  until  cases 
arise  where  the  co7iditions  are  comparable  in  every 
other  respect,  shall  we  begin  to  approach  an  ob- 
jective demonstration  in  the  question  of  children's 
decreasing  physico -psychical  vitality  when  they 
are  born  in  unwillingness  or  indifference,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  of  their  increasing  vitality  when  they 
are  born  in  love.  And  it  is  not  in  the  tender  years 
of  childhood,  but  when  they  have  lived  their 
life,  that  the  question  can  first  be  finally  answered. 

That  the  development  of  children's  inherited 
dispositions,  their  childhood's  happiness,  and 
the  future  tenor  of  their  life  are  determined  to  a 
great  extent  by  their  being  brought  up  in  a  home 
bright  with  happiness,  by  parents  who  co-operate 
in  sympathetic  understanding,  this  need  not  be 
dwelt  upon.     Everyone  knows  how  children  from 


Love's  Selection  167 

such  homes  have  received  the  gift  of  a  faith  in 
Hfe  and  a  feeling  of  security,  a  courage  and  a  joy- 
in  Hfe  which  no  subsequent  sufferings  can  wholly 
destroy.  They  have  laid  up  enough  warmth 
of  sunshine  to  prevent  their  being  frozen  through 
even  in  the  most  severe  winter.  Those,  on  the 
other  hand,  who  began  with  winter,  sometimes 
freeze  even  imder  the  stmimer  sun. 


It  is  no  more  true  with  regard  to  love's  selection 
than  in  any  other  respect  that  passion  is  opposed 
to  duty  otherwise  than  in  the  intermediary  stage 
of  development.  In  the  state  of  innocence  there 
is  no  division,  since  no  other  duty  exists  but  blindly 
to  follow  instinct.  When  development  is  com- 
pleted and  ''the  second  innocence"  attained,  duty 
will  be  abolished,  since  it  will  have  become  one 
with  instinct. 

It  will  then  be  seen  that  they  were  wrong  who 
now  think  that — while  God  walked  in  Paradise 
and  founded  marriage — the  devil  went  about  in 
the  wilderness  and  instituted  love.  Dualism 
will  be  vanquished  by  monism  when  the  circular 
course  of  development  has  brought  the  starting- 
point  near  to  the  goal;  when  the  natural  instinct 
of  the  race  meets  the  will  to  ennoble  the  race, 
bom  of  culture ;  when  the  golden  ring  from  either 
side  encircles  the  gem  with  the  sacred  sign  of 
life:  the  child.  But  the  treasure  which  is  now 
regarded  as   the  most   precious,   monogamy,    is 


i68  Love  and  Marriage 

perhaps  destined  not  to  be  encircled  by  the  golden 
ring  until  after  many  new  spiral  turns.  It  will 
he  so  when  love's  selection  has  finally  made  every 
man  and  woman  well  fitted  to  reproduce  the  race. 
Not  till  then  can  the  desired  ideal — one  man  for 
one  woman,  one  woman  for  one  man — universally 
include  the  best  vital  conditions,  for  the  individ- 
ual and  for  the  race.  And  when  we  have  come 
so  far,  the  will  of  erotic  choice  may  also  be  so 
delicately  and  firmly  entwined  with  every  fibre 
of  the  personality's  physico-psychical  material, 
that  a  man  will  only  be  able  to  find,  win,  and  keep 
a  single  woman,  a  woman  a  single  man.  Then  it 
may  be  that  many  human  beings  will  experience 
through  love's  selection  what  is  even  now  the 
fortune  of  a  few :  the  highest  enhancement  of  their 
individual  personality,  their  highest  form  of  life 
as  members  of  the  race,  and  their  highest  per- 
ception of  eternal  life. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  RIGHT  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

Everyone  knows  that  the  methods  of  pro- 
duction of  modem  society  tend  more  and  more 
to  limit  woman's  domestic  work  to  directing 
consumption,  whereas  at  earHer  stages  she  used 
also  to  produce  a  great  part  of  the  commodities 
consumed  in  the  home.  Everyone  can  see  too 
that  the  most  profoundly  influential  cause  of 
the  woman's  movement  has  thus  not  been  the 
assertion  of  woman's  political- juridical  rights 
as  a  himian  being,  but  first  and  foremost  the 
question  of  how  she  is  to  find  employment  for  her 
powers  of  work  which  are  no  longer  required  in 
the  home,  and  be  enabled  to  find  that  self -main- 
tenance outside  the  home  which  the  altered 
conditions  of  production  have  rendered  necessary. 

Through  the  ever-increasing  connection  between 
the  different  parts  of  society,  woman's  work  has 
had  profound  infiuence  in  other  quarters  than 
those  of  the  labour  market.  Competition  between 
the  sexes  has  produced — as  regards  manual 
labour — for  men  and  women  those  lower  con- 
ditions of  labour  which  are  the  usual  result  of 

169 


I70  Love  and  Marriage 

an  overcrowding  of  the  labour  market,  namely, 
low  wages,  long  hours,  and  uncertainty  of  em- 
ployment. The  possibility  of  marriage  has  become 
dependent  on  the  bread-winning  labour  of  both 
husband  and  wife.  Those  married  women  who 
are  partly  maintained  by  their  husbands,  have 
by  their  supplementary  earnings  reduced  the 
wages  of  the  self-supporting  unmarried  ones,  and 
when  these  in  their  turn  are  married,  they  lack 
the  desire  and  capacity  to  look  after  the  home 
and  waste  through  negligence  more  than  they 
earn  in  the  factory.  The  consequence  of  the 
outside  employment  of  wives — as  of  children — 
has  furthermore  been  sterility,  a  high  infant 
mortality,  and  the  degeneration  of  the  surviving 
children,  both  physically  and  psychically;  a 
debased  domestic  life  with  its  consequences: 
discomfort,  drunkenness,  and  crime. 

Among  the  middle  classes,  again,  the  competi- 
tion between  the  sexes  has  directly  reduced  man's 
chances  of  marriage,  and  indirectly  diminished 
the  desire  of  both  sexes  to  contract  matrimony. 

The  apparently  inevitable  law  that  one-sided- 
ness  alone  gives  strength  has  made  the  champions 
of  woman's  rights  left-handed  in  their  treatment 
of  all  social  questions  connected  with  their 
''cause."  They  have  pressed  forward  woman's 
right  to  work,  while  overlooking  both  the  con- 
ditions and  the  effects  of  her  work.  Women, 
actuated  by  the  combined  motive  power  of  the 
spirit  of  the  age  and  of  necessity,  have  looked  for 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         171 

employment  of  any  kind  and  at  however  low 
a  wage.  Among  the  middle  classes,  the  result 
has  been  that  many  girls,  who  were  in  no  need 
of  supporting  themselves  entirely  by  work,  have 
depressed  the  conditions  of  labour  for  those  women 
who  needed  it.  Thus  the  latter  are  held  down 
to  a  minimum  which  is  dangerous  alike  to  health 
and  to  morality.  Girls  living  at  home,  on  the 
other  hand,  have  been  able  to  satisfy  their  in- 
creased demands,  and  this  has  made  it  still  more 
difficult  for  a  man  to  offer  them  acceptable  con- 
ditions in  marriage. 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  the  self- 
maintenance  of  women  has  had  and  still  has  a 
profound  influence  on  love  in  marriage.  The 
Swedish  poet  Almquist  indicated  this  when  he 
wrote  that  only  the  woman  who  ''in  glad  activity 
can  provide  all  that  is  necessary  for  her  living'' 
makes  it  possible  for  the  man  to  whom  she  gives 
herself  ''to  say  rightly  to  himself^  I  am  loved.'' 

But  no  one  can  calculate  in  advance  how  a 
new  social  force  is  going  to  work  in  every  respect ; 
how  even  souls  are  changed  with  altered  needs, 
so  that  new  demands  and  forces  arise.  The 
erotic  problem  of  the  youth  of  the  present  day 
is  one  of  the  most  illuminating  pieces  of  evidence 
of  this  impossibility. 

Woman's  competition  with  man  in  the  field 
of  labour  has,  in  fact,  occasioned  a  profound  ill- 
feeling  between  the  sexes.  Women  feel  them- 
selves— rightly  or  wrongly — cheapened  and  under- 


172  Love  and  Marriage 

estimated,  and  men,  on  the  other  hand,  consider 
themselves  thrust  aside,  when  woman's  lower 
demands  of  wages  decide  the  competition  in  her 
favour.  But  this  is  still  the  external  side  of  the 
matter. 

It  is  the  new  woman — the  transformed  type 
of  soul — that  man  objects  to.  The  mannish 
emancipated  ladies  will  soon,  however,  have 
died  out.  We  can  therefore  pass  them  by  and 
consider  only  the  young  women  who  have  pre- 
served or  tried  to  preserve  their  possibilities 
of  erotic  attraction. 

These  have,  however,  lost  the  calm,  the  equi- 
librium, the  receptivity,  which  formerly  made  of 
woman  a  beautiful,  easily-comprehended  piece 
of  nature,  like  nature  in  her  unconditional  yield- 
ing. When  a  man  came  to  the  woman  he  loved 
with  his  worries,  his  fatigue,  his  disappointments, 
he  washed  himself  clean  as  in  a  cool  wave,  found 
peace  as  in  a  silent  forest.  Nowadays  she  meets 
him  with  her  worries,  her  disquiet,  her  fatigues, 
her  disappointments.  Her  picture  has  been  re- 
fused, her  book  is  misunderstood,  her  work  is 
abused,  her  examination  has  to  be  prepared  for 
.  .  .  always  hers!  All  this  makes  the  man 
think  her  disturbed,  unapproachable,  and  apt 
to  misunderstand.  Even  if  she  retains  her 
affectionate  attention  for  him,  she  has  lost  her 
elasticity.  She  does  not  choose  the  conditions 
of  her  work;  she  is  obliged  to  overwork  herself 
if  she  wishes  to  keep  her  work.     But  love — as 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         173 

has  been  aptly  said — requires  peace,  love  will 
dream;  it  cannot  live  upon  remnants  of  our  time 
and  our  personality.  And  thus  the  value  of  love — 
like  all  other  personal  values — sinks  under  modern 
conditions  of  work,  which  drain  the  vital  forces 
and  make  people  forget  even  the  meaning  of  the 
idea  of  living.  Thus  the  people  of  the  present 
day  are  excluded  from  love:  not  merely  from  the 
possibility  of  realising  it  in  marriage,  but  also 
from  the  possibility  of  fully  experiencing  it. 

Nor  have  these  over-tired  young  women  a 
chance  of  preserving  their  charm  in  outward 
appearance  and  manner.  This  is  only  done 
nowadays  in  a  conscious  style  by  ladies  of  the 
highest  society — and  by  those  of  the  demi- 
monde— who  perform  no  other  duty  to  the  com- 
munity than  the  more  elegant  than  worthy  one 
of  illustrating  the  parable  of  the  lilies  of  the  field. 
But  even  now  few  women  can  afford — and  fewer 
still  feel  that  they  have  the  right  to  or  the  lei- 
sure for — this  worship  of  their  own  intoxicating 
and  self -intoxicating  loveliness.  More  and  more 
have  to  take  part  in  a  life  of  work ;  while,  moreover, 
women  are  becoming  less  attracted  by  the  ideal 
of  perfection  of  form,  and  more  by  that  of  forma- 
tion of  personality.  But  this  movement  in- 
volves uncertainty  of  form,  until  new  forms  have 
been  created;  and  man  loves  in  woman  pre- 
cisely that  sureness,  lightness,  and  repose  in  her 
own  sense  of  power  which  are  generally  wanting 
in  the  tentative  young  woman  of  the  present 


174  Love  and  Marriage 

day.  A  new  kind  of  young  women  is,  however,  al- 
ready to  be  met  with,  who  will  neither  work  nor 
charm  exclusively,  and  who  are  solving  the  problem 
of  being  at  the  same  time  active  and  beautiful. 

Thus  the  deepest  conflict  of  all  lies  herein, 
that  young  men  feel  young  women  to  be  inde- 
pendent of  the  love  they  offer ;  they  feel  themselves 
weighed  and — found  wanting.  Woman's  capacity 
for  making  a  living  has  thus  undoubtedly  resulted, 
as  Almquist  hoped,  in  giving  man  a  greater  chance 
of  believing  himself  loved,  but  at  the  same  time 
— a  smaller  chance  of  being  so. 

We  see  two  groups  of  the  daughters  of  our 
time,  as  new  manifestations  of  woman's  primitive 
double  nature. 

For  one  group  the  child  is  not  the  immediate 
end  of  love,  and  still  less  can  the  child  sanctify 
all  the  means  for  its  attainment.  If  such  a 
woman  has  to  choose  between  giving  and  in- 
spiring a  love  as  great  as  that  of  her  di'eams, 
without  motherhood,  and  becoming  a  mother 
through  a  lesser  love,  then  she  will  choose  the 
former  without  hesitation.  And  if  she  becomes 
a  mother,  without  having  attained  the  full  height 
of  her  being  in  love,  she  feels  it  as  a  degradation; 
for  neither  child  nor  marriage  nor  love  are 
enough  for  her,  only  great  love  satisfies  her. 

This  is  the  most  important  step  in  advance  that 
woman  has  taken  since  from  the  emotional  sphere 
of  the  female  animal  she  approached  that  of  the 
human  woman.    And — however  great  may  be  the 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         175 

siifferings  that  this  attitude  of  the  soul  may 
involve  for  the  individual — no  one  who  sees 
sufficiently  deeply  can  hesitate  as  to  the  certainty 
of  this  being  the  true  line  of  life. 

This,  on  the  other  hand,  will  not  coincide  with 
the  path  of  those  women  who  are  now  demanding 
liberty  for  motherhood,  not  only  without  wedlock 
but  also  without  love. 

Those  who  hoped  that  woman's  independence 
through  work  would  assure  man's  knowledge 
of  being  loved,  did  not  reckon  for  woman's 
dependence  on  man  in  and  for  the  tenor  of  her 
life.  This  dependence,  created  by  nature  and 
not  by  society,  still  drives  many  otherwise  inde- 
pendent women  into  marriage  without  love ;  and 
it  drives  other  women,  who  wish  to  preserve 
their  independence  by  not  contracting  marriage, 
to  the  desire  of  attaining  a  mother's  happiness 
without  it.  The  new  woman's  will  to  live  through 
herself,  with  herself,  for  herself,  reaches  its  limit 
when  she  begins  to  regard  man  merely  as  a 
means  to  the  child.  Woman  could  scarcely  take 
a  more  complete  revenge  for  having  herself  been 
treated  for  thousands  of  years  as  a  means. 

We  must  hope,  however,  that  woman's  lust 
for  vengeance  will  not  long  retain  this  form. 
Woman's  degradation  to  a  means  has  retarded 
man's  and  her  own  development.  But  a  similar 
degradation  of  man  would  have  the  same  effect, 
and  the  children  might  suffer  just  as  much  through 
woman's  misuse  of  man  as  through  his  of  her. 


176  Love  and  Marriage 

The  child  must  be  an  end  in  itself.  It  requires 
love  as  its  origin;  it  requires  in  its  mother  love's 
understanding  of  the  qualities  it  has  inherited 
from  its  father,  not  a  surprised  coldness  or  resent- 
ment of  the  unsuspected  or  unwelcome  elements 
in  its  nature.  The  woman  who  has  never  loved 
her  child's  father  will  infallibly  injure  that  child 
in  some  way — if  in  no  other,  then  by  her  way  of 
loving  it.  The  child  needs  the  joy  of  brothers 
and  sisters,  and  not  even  the  tenderest  motherly 
love  can  take  the  place  of  this;  and  finally  the 
child  needs  the  father  as  the  father  the  child. 
That  children,  both  in  and  out  of  wedlock,  often 
lose  their  father  or  brother  or  sister  through  death 
or  life,  belongs  to  the  inevitable,  in  most  cases 
at  any  rate.  But  that  a  woman  with  full  know- 
ledge and  purpose  should  deprive  her  child  of 
the  right  of  gaining  life  through  love,  that  she 
should  exclude  it  in  advance  from  the  possibility 
of  a  father's  affection,  is  a  piece  of  selfishness 
which  must  avenge  itself.  The  right  of  mother- 
hood without  marriage  must  not  be  equivalent 
to  the  right  of  motherhood  without  love.  It  is 
equally  degrading  to  surrender  one's  self  without 
love  in  a  free  relationship  as  in  marriage.  In 
both  cases  one  can  steal  one's  child  and  thereby 
lose  the  right  of  one  day  proudly  assuring  it  that 
it  has  enjoyed  the  best  conditions  for  its  entry 
into  life.  Love — it  must  be  constantly  repeated — 
desires  the  future,  not  the  moment ;  it  desires  union, 
not  only  at  the  formation  of  a  new  being,  but  in 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         177 

order  that  two  persons  through  each  other  may 
care  for  a  new  and  greater  being  than  either  of 
themselves.  A  woman  may  be  mistaken  in  this 
love,  as  she  may  be  in  her  suitabiHty  for  marriage. 
But  this  she  cannot  know  in  advance.  She 
experiences  these  things  first  in  loving.  If  she 
has  misplaced  her  devotion,  then  it  will  not  save 
her  to  conceal  the  mistake  in  a  marriage.  But 
to  receive  her  child  from  a  man  with  whom  she 
knows  in  advance  that  she  never  intends  to  live, 
this  is  having  an  illegitimate  child  in  the  deepest 
sense  of  the  word.  But  this  is  nevertheless 
the  way  in  which  a  number  of  women  now  think 
that  "the  madonna  of  the  future"  is  to  win  a 
mother's  happiness. 


Work  is  always  a  development  of  force,  and 
the  more  it  exercises  our  individual  powers,  the 
greater  happiness  will  it  give.  No  part  of  the 
old  catechism  is  more  valuable  than  that  which 
is  omitted  in  the  new,  on  the  blessings  of  labour. 
The  path  of  every  cherished  and  reasonable  work 
might  be  marked  by  milestones,  on  which  the 
good  old  words  should  be  carved:  here  "health," 
there  "welfare";  here  "comfort  and  consolation 
in  adversity ,"  and  there  "  preventing  lapses  into 
sin," — above  all,  that  of  doubting  the  value  of 
life. 

But  the  man  to  whom  work  has  given  all  this 
has  all  the  more  reason  to  curse  the  work  of 


178^  Love  and  Marriage 

women,  who  are  able  neither  to  choose  their 
labour  according  to  their  talents  nor  to  pro- 
portion their  hours  of  work  according  to  their 
strength.  Greater  and  greater  are  the  multi- 
tudes who  move  forward  upon  the  road  of  toil, 
where  the  milestones  bear  the  inscriptions:  ill- 
health,  uncertainty  for  the  morrow  as  for  the 
future,  joylessness,  lethargy  of  the  soul,  and  the 
sins  that  thrive  in  the  shadow,  above  all  that  of 
blaspheming  life  as  meaningless. 

For  others  again  work  has  come  to  mean  in 
our  time  drunkenness,  vice,  and  superstition.  It 
has  made  men  and  women  unscrupulous,  empty, 
hard,  restless.  It  has  made  them  destroy  for 
others  the  remaining  treasures  of  life — sorrow, 
love,  the  home,  nature,  beauty,  books,  peace — 
peace  above  all,  since  it  is  the  condition  of  the 
full  realisation  of  suffering  as  of  joy.  The  grand 
words  about  the  liberty  and  the  joy  of  labour 
mean  in  reality  slavery  and  trouble  over  labour^ 
the  only  trouble  our  time  fully  experiences. 

With  thoughtless  hymns  of  praise  to  this 
massacring  labour,  society  allows  one  holy  spring- 
time after  another  to  wither  without  having 
blossomed — whereas  thousands  of  years  ago  the 
cities  of  antiquity  sent  their  "holy  springs"  to 
open  up  new  districts  and  build .  new  dwellings 
for  men. 

Just  as  true  as  that  the  losses  of  the  individual 
mean  the  poverty  of  all,  when  these  losses  involve 
a  diminution  of  health  and  power;  just  as  certain 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         179 

as  that  nothing  becomes  better  without  the  desire 
to  improve  it,  so  is  it  a  healthy  sign  of  the  times 
that  starvation  wages  for  conscientious  drudgery 
no  longer  fill  young  women  with  heartfelt  grati- 
tude. They  know,  these  young  women,  that  their 
own  nature  also  can  be  outraged;  that  there  are 
other  suppressed  forces  in  woman's  being  besides 
only  the  desire  of  knowledge  and  the  thirst  for 
activity,  and  that  neither  the  right  to  work  nor 
that  of  citizenship  can  compensate  for  trampled 
possibilities  of  happiness. 

Far  from  its  being  the  duty  of  any  thoughtful 
person  to  lull  to  rest  this  despondency  of  the 
young,  we  should  render  the  best  service  to  them 
and  to  life  by  taking  from  them  everyday  con- 
tentment and  the  calm  of  resignation;  for  only 
the  suffering  which  is  kept  awake,  the  longing 
which  remains  alive,  can  become  forces  in  the 
revolt  against  that  order  of  society  which  has 
added  meaningless  pangs,  hostile  to  life,  to  those 
that  the  laws  of  life  and  life's  development  still 
necessarily  involve  in  the  relations  of  sex. 


All  confined  forces,  which  do  not  find  employ- 
ment, may  degenerate;  and  our  time,  with  its 
repression  of  the  erotic  forces,  can  show  even 
among  women  such  signs  of  degeneration. 

It  is  therefore  a  necessary  self-assertion  when 
those  who  are  excluded  from  love  seek  to  preserve 
their  health  and  enrich  their  life  with  the  sources 


i8o  Love  and  Marriage 

of  joy  which  are  at  the  disposal  of  every  living 
person.  Even  he  who  is  chained  to  an  unin- 
teresting work  can  find  some  moments  to  feel 
his  way  along  some  path  which  leads  to  a  glimpse 
of  the  infinite  space  of  science.  Almost  every  kind 
of  work  may  bring  with  it  an  increase  of  individual 
capacity,  and  therewith  also  of  joy  at  feeling  one's 
value  as  a  workman  and  one's  dignity  as  a  per- 
sonality enhanced.  There  is  no  day  which  may 
not  bring  with  it  a  glimpse  of  delight  in  beauty. 
Finally  there  is  no  hour — except  the  heaviest 
hours  of  sorrow — in  which  a  human  being  cannot 
feel  the  strength  and  greatness  of  his  own  soul; 
its  independence  of  all  external  fortunes;  its 
power  of  seeking  itself,  finding  itself,  enhancing 
itself  through  all  and  in  spite  of  all.  The  words 
which  Victor  Hugo  put  to  a  young  woman  in 
sorrow : 

N'avez-vous  pas  voire  dine? 

are  addressed  to  all  who  have  been  badly  treated 
by  life. 

And  whatever  belief  or  unbelief  a  person  may 
profess,  it  is  in  the  last  resort  this  consciousness 
of  his  own  soul's  worth  which  saves  him  when  no 
other  help  is  to  be  found  —  and  there  is  no  other 
help. 

In  this  sense  it  is  doubtless  true  that  the  human 
being,  woman  as  well  as  man,  is  an  end  in  herself; 
that  she  has  fulfilled  her  task  if  she  has  not  suffered 
injury  to  her  soul,  even  if  she  has  gained  nothing 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         i8i 

else  from  life;  if  she  has  increased  the  power  of 
her  soul,  discovered  her  own  individuality  and 
realised  it;  for  this  alone  is  saving  one's  soul. 
In  this  sense  it  is  true  that  the  "mission "of 
woman  as  of  man  cannot  be  the  sexual  mission, 
which  does  not  depend  upon  our  own  will  alone; 
nor,  therefore,  can  he  who  has  not  fulfilled  this 
be  said  to  have  lived  in  vain.  In  this  sense  also 
there  is  at  bottom  a  certain  agreement  between 
the  feeling  of  self-glorification  just  described  and 
that  of  those  who  think  that  neither  woman's 
nor  man's  highest  destiny  can  be  love,  but  only 
the  life  of  an  eternal  being  above  all  earthly  and 
social  considerations;  that  the  highest  reality 
of  every  human  being  is  within  himself,  and  that 
his  highest  happiness  can  be  only  to  grow  in 
holiness  and  godliness. 

But  for  the  shaping  of  life  the  difference  is 
immeasurable.  Here  we  are  confronted  once  more 
by  the  dualist  and  monist  views  of  life,  the  belief 
in  the  soul  as  supersensuous,  and  the  belief  in 
the  soul  as  dwelling  in  the  senses;  the  belief  that 
the  soul  can  attain  its  highest  development  and 
happiness  independently  of — instead  of  by  means 
of — its  earthly  conditions. 

According  to  the  latter  view  man  and  woman 
are  determined  by  their  sexual  life  even  in  the 
greatest  emotions  of  their  soul.  Sexual  emotions 
pulsate  in  the  age  of  puberty's  dreams  of  heroic 
deeds  and  martyrdom ;  they  are  the  warm  under- 
current in    the  religious  needs  which  awaken  at 


1 82  Love  and  Marriage 

that  time.  Every  woman  who  has  afterwards 
performed  a  brilHant  achievement  of  love,  who 
has  become  a  great  Christian  character — Hke 
St.  Bridget  of  Sweden,  like  St.  Catherine 
of  Siena,  or  like  St.  Teresa — has  had  the 
fire  of  great  love  in  her  soul;  her  blood  has  been 
on  fire  with  the  longing  to  serve  the  race  with 
body  and  soul.  And  therefore  also  her  charity 
had  warmth  in  it,  while  the  victims  of  so  much 
other  benevolence  freeze  like  shorn  sheep. 

A  woman's  essential  ego  must  be  brought  out  by 
love  before  she  can  do  anything  great  for  others 
or  for  herself.  She  whose  existence  has  been 
erotically  blank  seldom  finds  the  way  to  what  is 
human  in  a  great  sense,  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
she  to  whom  life  has  denied  the  opportunity  of 
manifesting  her  erotic  being  in  the  usual  sense, 
transforms  it  into  an  Eros  that  embraces  all  life, 
the  Eros  of  whom  Plato  had  the  intuition  when 
he  made  Diotima  proclaim  him:  a  touch  of  in- 
finite delicacy;  for  may  it  not  possibly  be  only 
woman  who — since  her  whole  nature  is  erotic — 
can  thus  satisfy  her  love-longing  from  the  whole 
of  existence? 

But  this  sense  of  oneness  with  the  universe — 
which  the  theosophist,  the  mystic,  the  pantheist, 
and  the  evolutionist  express  each  in  his  own  way, 
but  which  they  all  feel  alike — is,  above  all,  the 
gift  of  a  great  happiness  in  love.  It  is  this  way 
of  loving  of  which  it  is  especially  true  to  say, 
that  only  he  who   loves   knows  God,   the    great 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         183 

word  for  unity  in  the  all,  in  which  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being.  Not  because  God 
created  mankind  to  increase  and  inhabit  the 
earth,  but  because  they  were  fruitful  and  filled 
the  earth  with  beings  and  with  work,  did  they 
give  the  Creator's  name  to  life  and  worshipped 
in  the  likeness  of  gods  their  own  creative  power, 
on  account  of  which  they  also  dreamed  that 
they  were  eternal. 

Because  fruitfulness,  the  power  of  production 
in  all  its  forms,  is  the  divine  part  of  man,  it  is 
impossible  for  anyone  without  it  to  attain  "holi- 
ness and  communion  with  God"  in  the  meaning 
of  the  religion  of  life,  or,  in  other  words,  full 
humanity.  Even  in  its  limited  form,  that  of 
creating  a  family,  it  is  the  unerring  means  of 
extending  the  ego  beyond  its  own  limits,  the 
simplest  condition  for  humanisation.  It  can 
transform  the  egoist  into  a  generous  man,  merely 
by  giving  him  something  to  live  for.  For  this 
reason  love  has  taken  the  place  of  religion  with 
innumerable  people,  because  it  has  the  same  power 
of  making  them  good  and  great,  but  a  hundred- 
fold greater  power  of  making  them  happy.  There- 
fore all  great  and  beautiful  resignation — flowing 
with  sweetness  and  benevolence — is  like  a  vine- 
yard, made  upon  the  slope  of  a  crater. 

But  therefore  also  it  is  true  of  all  who  have 
quenched  the  warmth  of  fruitfulness  in  them- 
selves, that  they  have  committed  the  one  un- 
pardonable sin,  that  against  the  holy  spirit  of 


1 84  Love  and  Marriage 

life.  These  women  have  received  their  condemna- 
tion in  Lessing's  fable  of  Hera,  who  sent  Iris  to 
earth  to  seek  out  three  virtuous,  perfectly  chaste 
maidens,  unsoiled  by  any  dreams  of  love.  And 
Iris  certainly  found  them,  but  did  not  bring 
them  back  to  Olympus;  for  Hades  had  already 
made  Hermes  fetch  them  for  the  infernal  regions 
— there  to  replace  the  superannuated  Furies. 


Because  the  means  of  life  must  never  eclipse 
the  meaning  of  life — which  is  to  live  with  one's 
whole  being,  and  thus  to  be  able  to  impart  an  ever 
greater  fulness  of  life — it  is  immoral  to  live  solely 
either  for  sanctity  or  for  work,  fatherland  or 
humanity,  or  even  love,  for  man  is  to  live  by  all 
these.  His  exclusion  from  one  of  these  means  of 
full  humanity  can  never  be  compensated  by  his 
participation  in  any  of  the  others,  just  as  little 
as  one  of  his  senses  can  be  replaced  by  another, 
even  though  the  latter  be  perfected  under  the 
necessity  of  serving  in  the  place  of  the  lost  one. 
And  the  resignation  which  prematurely  contents 
itself  with  part  of  the  rights  of  its  human  nature 
instead  of  aspiring  to  the  whole,  such  resignation 
is  a  falling  to  sleep  in  the  snow.  It  is  undeniably 
a  calmer  state  than  that  of  keeping  one's  soul 
on  the  stretch  for  new  experiences;  for  in  that 
case  one  must  also  be  prepared  for  new  wounds; 
and  he  who  keeps  his  suffering  awake  can  be  sure 
of  more  pain  than  he  who  puts  it   to  sleep  with 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         185 

an  opiate.  But  no  criterion  is  meaner  than  that 
of  suffering  or  not  suffering.  The  question  is 
only  what  a  man  suffers  from,  and  what  he  be- 
comes— for  himself  and  others — or  does  not  be- 
come as  the  result  of  his  pain. 

Life  holds  in  one  hand  the  golden  crown  of 
happiness,  in  the  other  the  iron  crown  of  suffering. 
To  her  favoured  ones  she  hands  them  both.  But 
only  he  is  an  outcast  whose  temples  have  felt  the 
weight  of  neither. 


A  woman  of  feeling  once  said  that,  although 
love  was  acknowledged  by  the  majority  as  life's 
greatest  treasure,  mankind  has  not  yet  been  able 
to  prepare  a  place  for  love  in  life.  Outside  of 
marriage  it  is  called  sin;  within  it — as  marriage 
now  is — love  can  seldom  live,  and  if  it  arises  for 
another  than  the  partner  in  marriage,  then  for 
the  sake  of  the  children  it  must  be  sacrificed. 

It  is  this  observation  which  made  the  new 
women  all  the  more  decided  to  prepare  a  place 
for  love  outside  matrimony. 

Women — and  men  too — have  begun  to  examine 
the  ideas  of  morality  in  which  the  small  and  the 
great  values  are  mixed  together  like  the  cards  in  a 
shuffled  pack.  As  far  as  woman  is  concerned,  all 
morality  has  become  synonymous  with  sexual 
morality;  all  sexual  morality  synonymous  with 
the  absence  of  sensuality  and  the  existence  of  a 
marriage,  certificate.  In  speech  and  in  poetry 
woman's  mission  as  "wife  and  mother "  is  glorified, 


1 86  Love  and  Marriage 

but  at  the  same  time  the  mission  is  not  considered 
honourable  until  it  is  attained,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, dishonourable  so  long  as  it  is  sought  after 
with  the  healthy  strength  which  is  the  condition 
of  its  complete  fulfilment.  A  woman  may  be 
proud  and  strong,  good  and  active,  courageous  and 
generous,  honourable  and  trustworthy,  faithful 
and  loyal — in  a  word,  she  may  possess  all  the 
virtues  prized  by  man — and  yet  be  called  immoral 
if  she  gives  a  new  life  to  the  race.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  woman,  irreproachable  from  the  point  of 
view  of  sexual  morality,  may  be  as  cowardly, 
slanderous,  and  tmtruthful  as  she  can  be  without 
being  denied  the  respect  of  society. 

This  confusion  of  thought  is  to  such  an  extent 
one  with  the  feelings,  that  it  may  take  centuries 
for  new  ideas  of  justice  to  work  a  change. 

In  spite  of  all,  however,  it  remains  a  truth  that 
a  woman's  morality  in  other  respects  is  more  pro- 
foundly connected  with  her  sexual  morality  than 
is  the  case  with  a  man.  Nature  herself  estab- 
lished this  connection,  when  she  made  love  and 
the  child  more  closely  bound  up  with  woman's 
existence  than  with  man's.  It  must  always  be  a 
matter  of  paramount  importance  to  a  woman's 
whole  personality  to  abandon  herself  to  the  possi- 
bility of  creating  a  new  life;  and  therefore  a 
woman's  attitude,  not  with  regard  to  marriage, 
but  certainly  with  regard  to  motherhood,  will  be 
decisive  evidence  of  her  moral  development  in 
other  respects  and  of  her  spiritual  culture. 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         187 

The  same  sexual  freedom  for  woman  as  for  man 
is  to  every  profoundly  womanly  woman  a  demand 
contrary  to  nature.  But  this  does  not  mean 
either  that  man  ought  to  continue  to  misuse  his 
freedom  or  that  woman  must  continue  to  confine 
hers  within  "lawful"  bounds;  nor  yet  does  it 
mean  that  women  ought  to  go  on  lying  to  them- 
selves, to  men,  and  to  each  other  concerning  their 
nature  as  sexual  beings.  It  is  true  that  many 
women  exist  who  have  no  feeling  of  this  kind,  and 
that  other  married  women  deny  the  claims  of 
the  senses — because  they  have  had  them  satisfied 
before  they  became  conscious.  But  when  the 
development  of  love  has  introduced  a  purer  and 
healthier  view,  neither  women  nor  men  will  con- 
sider it  a  merit  or  superiority  in  a  woman  to 
develop  in  herself  the  character  of  *'the  third 
sex."  Then  everyone  will  acknowledge  that  hu- 
man life,  to  be  in  the  fullest  sense  healthy  and 
rich,  must  imply  fulfilment  of  the  sexual  destiny, 
and  that  even  if  a  restriction  of  the  vital  forces  in 
this  respect  does  not  entail  physical  suffering, 
then  it  must  involve  profound  psychical  injury 
resulting  in  diminished  powers.  Nor  will  one  then 
wilfully  blink  at  the  fact  that — among  many 
strong,  well-balanced,  active  immarried  women — 
others  are  to  be  found  who  are  equally  worthy  of 
respect,  although  they  cannot  attain  harmony 
without  motherhood.  And  the  cause  is  not  want 
of  self-discipline  or  seriousness  in  work,  but 
simply  the  fact  already  stated:  that  sexual  life 


1 88  Love  and  Marriage 

in  a  woman — when  it  has  become  strong  and 
healthy — dominates  her  in  a  far  more  intimate 
way  than  it  does  a  man.  She  seldom  stiffers 
acutely,  often  unconsciously  or  half-consciously, 
from  restriction  in  this  direction;  but  to  make 
up  for  this  she  suffers  in  a  far  more  radical  way, 
which  slowly  exhausts  her  vital  forces ;  and  many 
cases  of  madness,  hysteria,  etc.,  are  due  to  this 
cause. 

Every  victim  of  this  kind  makes  life  the  poorer; 
for  it  is  often  the  warmest  feminine  natures,  the 
richest  in  goodness  and  in  soul,  the  most  fruitful 
in  every  sense,  that  go  under  in  this  way.  And 
in  them  the  race  loses  not  only  directly,  but  also 
indirectly,  in  their  children  that  were  never  born. 

For  the  present  it  can  be  only  by  an  altered 
criterion  of  morality  that  these  losses  can  be 
avoided,  at  least  so  long  as  there  is  not  one  man 
for  every  woman.  For  we  can  look  only  for  a 
very  slow  operation  of  the  measures  which  may 
restore  the  balance  that  nature  seems  to  intend 
by  an  actual  excess  in  the  birth-rate  of  boys  over 
girls;  measures,  that  is,  for  the  better  protection 
of  the  lives  of  male  children  and  men.  A  proposal 
which  was  put  forward  a  few  years  ago  in  one  of 
the  leading  civilised  countries  undoubtedly  de- 
serves consideration  as  an  incidental  remedy; 
namely,  to  arrange  an  organised  and  well-super- 
vised emigration  of  capable  women  from  the 
countries  where  they  are  in  excess  to  others  where 
the  reverse  is  the  case ;  for  while  their  proficiency 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         189 

in  work  would  make  these  women  independent  of 
marriage,  they  would  thus  be  afforded  increased 
possibilities  of  marrying,  as  would  the  surplus 
men— at  present,  in  the  countries  referred  to, 
left  to  the  alternatives  of  celibacy  or  prostitution. 

In  the  main  it  is,  however,  only  the  awakening 
of  the  consciousness  of  society  that  can  provide  a 
remedy.  But  until  youth  itself  awakens  the  con- 
science of  the  time  with  the  tocsin  of  action,  that 
remedy  is  likely  to  be  long  in  coming. 

In  one  respect  young  working  men  and  women 
might  take  their  destiny  in  their  own  hands, 
namely,  in  the  purely  external  point  of  providing 
themselves  with  the  opportunities  they  lack — 
which  in  the  case  of  young  people  of  the  student 
class  now  form  the  foundation  of  many  a  life's 
happiness — opportunities  of  getting  to  know 
each  other  under  pleasant  and  worthy  conditions 
of  comradeship. 

In  those  cases  again  where  a  woman's  destiny 
from  one  cause  or  another  has  rendered  the 
realisation  of  love  impossible,  she  ought — like  the 
wife  in  a  childless  marriage — oftener  than  at 
present  to  enrich  her  life  and  partly  satisfy  her 
motherly  feeling  by  choosing  one  among  the 
destitute  children,  who  are  unfortunately  still  to 
be  found  in  abundance,  to  provide  for  and  love. 
Such  grafts  upon  one's  own  stem  often  give 
splendid  fruit.  The  lonely  woman  thereby  avoids 
falling  a  victim  to  that  hardness  and  bitterness, 
which  are  not  necessary  consequences  of  a  checked 


190  Love  and  Marriage 

sexual  life,  but  are  all  the  more  so  of  a  frozen  life 
of  the  heart. 

In  those  cases  where  a  woman  suffers  a  lasting 
and  unendurable  clogging  of  her  life  through  the 
want  of  motherhood,  she  must  choose  the  lesser 
evil,  that  of  becoming  a  mother  even  without 
love,  in  or  out  of  wedlock.  Necessity  is  its  own 
law — and  he  who  steals  to  save  his  life  ought  to  go 
free.  But  she  must  not  be  made  an  example  for 
others  who  are  not  placed  in  the  same  necessity. 

The  solution  of  the  right  of  motherhood, 
therefore,  ought  not  to  be  the  encouragement  of 
the  majority  of  unmarried  women  to  provide 
themselves  with  children  without  love;  not  even 
the  encouragement  of  the  majority  to  obtain 
them  through  love  when  they  know  in  advance 
that  a  continued  community  of  life  with  the 
child's  father  is  impossible. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  unmarried  woman, 
from  her  own  point  of  view  as  well  as  from  that 
of  the  race,  has  a  right  to  motherhood,  when  she 
possesses  so  rich  a  human  soul,  so  great  a  mother's 
heart,  and  so  manly  a  courage  that  she  can  bear 
an  exceptional  lot.  She  has  all  the  riches  of  her 
own  and  her  lover's  nature  to  leave  through  the 
child  as  a  heritage  to  the  race;  she  has  the  whole 
development  of  her  personality,  her  mental  and 
bodily  vital  force,  her  independence  won  through 
labour,  to  give  to  the  child's  bringing-up.  In  her 
occupation  she  has  had  use  only  for  a  part  of  her 
being:  she  desires  to  manifest  it  fully  and  wholly, 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         191 

before  she  resigns  the  gift  of  life.  She  therefore 
becomes  a  mother  with  the  full  approval  of  her 
conscience. 

All  this,  however,  seldom  applies  to  a  woman 
before  she  has  reached  or  exceeded  the  limit  of 
la  seconda  primavera;  not  till  then  will  she  feel 
fully  sure  of  her  longing  and  her  courage,  nor  will 
she  have  reason  to  know  that  life  has  no  higher 
destiny  for  her.  And  even  she  must  not  be 
taken  as  an  example  of  a  final  solution  of  the 
problem.  But  in  times  like  ours,  when  the 
hindrances  to  life  in  this  direction  have  become 
unendurable,  bold  experiments  are  justified — 
when  they  are  successful. 

In  order  that  such  an  experiment  shall  succeed, 
the  woman  must  be  not  merely  as  pure  as  snow, 
she  must  be  as  pure  as  fire  in  her  certainty  of  giv- 
ing her  own  life  a  bright  enhancement  and  a  new 
treasure  to  the  race  in  the  child  of  her  love. 

If  she  is  this — then  indeed  there  is  a  gulf,  deep 
as  the  centre  of  the  earth,  fixed  between  this 
unmarried  woman,  who  presents  her  child  to  the 
race,  and  the  unmarried  woman,  who  "has  a 
child." 

Beyond  all  doubt  the  first-named  would  have 
considered  it  the  ideal  of  happiness  to  be  able  to 
bring  up  her  child  together  with  its  father.  The 
circumstances  which  prevent  her  may  be  many. 
The  man's  liberty,  for  instance,  may  be  limited 
by  earlier  duties  or  feelings,  which  bind  him, 
against  his  will  or  not.     The  conditions  of  life  or 


192  Love  and  Marriage 

of  work  of  one  of  them  may  prevent  a  complete 
union.  So  may  the  experience  that  the  person- 
aHty  of  one  of  them  is  fettered  through  marriage. 
Or  again,  love  itself  was  not  what  it  had  promised 
to  be,  and  the  woman  was  proud  enough  not  to 
consider  herself  fallen  and  in  need  of  being  reha- 
bilitated by  a  marriage  which,  on  the  contrary, 
would  under  these  circumstances  be  a  fall. 

Finally,  there  are  exceptional  cases,  where  a 
superior  woman — for  it  is  often  the  best  who  are 
seized  by  the  powerful  desire  of  a  child — feels 
that  she  cannot  combine  her  motherhood  with 
the  claims  of  love  and  of  intellectual  production; 
that  she  can  suffice  for  only  two  duties,  and  there- 
fore accepts  from  love  the  child  but  renounces 
marriage. 

But  there  are  also  destinies  entirely  contrary  to 
these,  where  a  woman  for  her  own  part  wished 
to  have  a  child  but  renounces  it  for  the  man's 
sake. 

In  most  cases  this  is  because  she  surrounds 
his  work  with  such  affection  that,  when  it  is  asked 
of  her,  she  sacrifices  to  it  her  mother's  happiness 
in  the  spirit  of  Heloise.  And  the  more  love  is 
perfected,  the  more  does  woman  thus  learn  to 
love  her  husband's  work  as  her  child,  while  he, 
on  the  other  hand,  loves  her  work  as  his  own. 

But  it  may  also  be  for  other  reasons  that  a 
woman  desires  a  man  to  keep  his  complete  freedom; 
it  may  be,  for  instance,  that  he  is  the  younger,  or 
that  she  knows  she  cannot  give  him  a  child.     Such 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         193 

unions  are  not  unusual  in  Europe,  unions  by 
which  two  people  long  make  their  own  lives  and 
the  lives  of  those  about  them  richer.  In  such  a 
case  the  woman  transforms  her  motherliness  into 
affection  for  the  man.  She  gives  the  best  of  her 
powers  of  production  for  his  use,  so  that  he  grows 
while  she  stops  short.  But  she  thereby  enjoys 
the  bliss  of  a  mother  with  a  child  at  her  breast; 
as  the  mother  feeds  herself  for  the  child,  so  does 
such  a  mistress  seek  the  finest  intellectual  nourish- 
ment that  she  may  afterwards  impart  it:  she 
feels  that  she  steals  what  she  enjoys  alone.  Per- 
haps the  legend  of  the  pelican,  which  nourished 
its  young  with  its  own  blood,  would  be  a  better 
symbol  for  these  women,  who  must  be  prepared 
sooner  or  later  to  see  the  man  choose  the  young 
bride  who  in  every  respect  will  answer  to  his 
longing.  Cases  like  these,  if  any,  verify  Niet- 
zsche's words  that  "great  love  desires  more  than  a 
return,"  and  that  "it  will  create."  Here,  if  ever, 
woman's  nature  reveals  that  its  great  genius  is  for 
love;  that  the  higher  a  woman  attains,  the  more 
certainly  will  her  own  honour,  her  own  triumphs, 
her  own  future  weigh  lightly  as  a  feather  against 
the  joy  of  being  able  to  develop  in  all  its  fulness 
her  great  talent,  that  of  loving.  And  when  does 
she  love  more  highly  than  in  lavishing  the  whole 
superfluity  of  her  developed  feminine  nature  on 
the  perfecting  of  her  lover — for  another  woman? 

What  every  woman  needs,    in  our  time  more 
than  in  any  other,  has  been  expressed  by  Ricarda 


194  Love  and  Marriage 

Huch   in   these   words:     Courage  for   one's   seljy 
sympathy  for  others. 

Courage  for  one's  own  destiny;  courage  to 
bear  it  or  break  under  it.  But  also  courage  to 
wait  for,  to  choose  one*s  destiny.  Sympathy 
with  the  many  who  have  lacked  one  part  or 
another  of  the  new  courage:  boldness  or  vigilance 
or  patience. 


Both  these  courses  which  woman's  new  courage 
has  found  out — the  man  and  work  without  the 
child,  or  the  child  and  work  without  the  man — 
may  doubtless  be  called  justified  forms  of  life, 
when  they  show  themselves  life-enhancing.  But 
they  cannot  be  the  line  of  life  for  the  majority. 
This  line  follows  the  direction  of  the  old  Indian 
proverb :  that  the  man  is  half  a  human  being,  and 
the  woman  half;  only  the  father  and  mother 
with  their  child  can  become  a  whole.  And  even 
if  women  have  the  right,  so  faras  life  is  thereby 
enhanced,  to  satisfy  their  erotic  longing,  they 
ought  never  to  forget  that  they  never  attain  their 
full  humanity  until  through  love  they  have  given 
their  husband  a  child  and  their  child  a  father. 


We  have  not  spoken  here  of  the  young  women 
who  are  immarried  wives  of  men,  while  waiting 
till  the  latter  are  able  to  provide  a  home  for  the 
child  and  a  full  domestic  life.     These  women  may, 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         195 

it  is  true,  experience  the  grief  of  having  trusted 
too  much  to  their  own  or  another's  heart.  But 
they  have  been  pure  in  their  will  and  their  will  has 
been  directed  towards  the  future  domestic  life, 
not  towards  "adventures,'*  whose  only  value  for 
them  has  been  that  they  rapidly  succeeded  each 
other. 

The  young  women  alluded  to  must,  therefore, 
be  carefully  distinguished  from  those  who  have 
become  the  hetairae  of  the  present  day.  These 
neo-Greek  women  are  finely  cultured,  richly 
endowed,  choice  and  pure  types  of  the  cerebral 
and  polygamous  woman.  Love  for  them  is  an 
element  of  enjoyment — somewhat  higher  than 
that  of  the  cigarette  with  which  their  dainty 
fingers  toy,  or  of  the  alcohol  which  warms  their 
pale  cheeks — but  decidedly  lower  than  the  joy  of 
colour  or  the  intoxication  of  poetry. 

They  share  with  man  the  joy  of  work,  the 
desire  of  creation,  delight  in  beauty,  ideas,  and 
freedom  in  love.  Nothing  would  be  more  unwel- 
come to  them  than  possible  consequences  of 
their  "love,"  which  passes  from  one  relation  to 
another,  with  a  growing  sense  of  emptiness, 
fatigue,  and  prostration.  Unfruitfulness  in  every 
respect,  that  is  their  lot  and  their  condemnation; 
for  life  has  no  use  for  the  solitary  imfruitful. 
Sometimes  indeed  they  are  not  even  capable  of 
continuing  to  live — only  to  prove  again  and  again 
that  their  soul  cannot  love,  cannot  create,  cannot 
suffer,  and  has  no  other  will  but  to   free  itself 


196  Love  and  Marriage 

from  the  tree  of  life  like  a  damaged  bud,  a  spoilt 
fruit. 

The  right  to  an  exceptional  destiny  belongs  only 
to  one  whose  happiness  it  provides  for;  in  other 
words,  one  whom  it  places  in  such  an  agreement 
between  the  needs  of  his  own  life  and  the  surround- 
ing conditions  that  the  powers  of  the  individual 
thus  attain  their  highest  possible  development. 
And  as  this  is  seldom  the  case  when  the  individ- 
ual creates  for  himself  a  position  which  places 
him  in  conflict  with  society,  no  thoughtful  person 
can  thus  refer  to  an  exceptional  destiny  the 
majority  of  young  women  now  oppressed  by 
compulsory  labour,  who  wish  to  improve  their  lot. 
The  most  immediate  possibility  to  begin  with  is 
to  improve  the  character  and  conditions  of  their 
labour. 

Women  must  be  more  eager  to  discover  or  invent 
for  themselves  departments  of  work  which  will 
give  them  the  opportunity  of  expressing  some- 
thing of  their  feminine  nature,  their  human  per- 
sonality. It  is  one  of  the  gladdening  signs  of  the 
times  that  this  is  beginning  to  be  done.  Thus, 
for  instance,  in  Denmark  a  distinguished  lady 
mathematician — determined  by  precisely  the 
reasons  given  above — has  abandoned  her  science 
and  become  the  first  female  inspector  of  factories 
in  Scandinavia.  Thus  in  Germany  a  lady  chemist, 
for  the  same  reasons,  has  chosen  the  same  career. 
A  lady  lawyer  in  the  same  country  is  devoting 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         197 

herself  entirely  to  the  protection  of  children; 
another — in  France — to  the  profession  of  advocate 
for  the  assistance  of  poor  women.  But  there  are 
still  to  be  found  far  too  many  women  whose 
fortunate  situation  has  given  them  free  choice 
in  their  work  and  who,  nevertlieless,  have  sought 
the  profession  which  offers  them  the  surest  income 
or  the  largest  pension,  not  the  most  liberal  use  of 
their  personal  powers. 

But  even  the  possibility  of  the  choice  belongs 
to  exceptional  ability  or  exceptional  circimistances. 
The  majority  of  women,  who  must  work  or  wish 
to  work,  have  difficulty  in  finding  a  calling  which 
really  gives  them  a  backbone,  not  merely  a  stick 
to  hold  them  up.  To  render  possible  a  greater 
organic  connection  between  woman  and  her  work, 
nothing  is  more  necessary  than  a  business  and 
professional  agency  or  exchange,  to  which  reports 
would  be  sent  from  different  places  as  to  local 
needs  of  practical  or  ideal  work,  and  then,  in 
connection  therewith,  a  new  kind  of  mortgage 
bank,  but  one  in  which  the  mortgages  would  be 
upon  young  women's  courage,  industry,  and 
invention;  a  bank,  in  fact,  which  would  advance 
on  easy  terms  of  repayment  the  loans  which  would 
be  necessary  to  enable  these  at  present  unutilised 
assets  to  be  invested  in  the  wealth  of  the  nation. 
The  sum  of  happiness  of  unmarried  women  would 
rise  if  their  creative  instinct  were  thus  at  least 
directed  into  a  strong  and  healthy  activity,  by 
means  of  which  they  could  in  some  measure  satisfy 


198  Love  and  Marriage 

their  need  of  having  something  to  care  for,  of 
evoking  around  them  comfort  and  beauty. 

No  fund  would  be  more  worthy  of  the  sub- 
scriptions of  enHghtened  patrons  than  such  a  one 
as  this. 

It  is  important,  again,  that  all  those  women 
who  are  forced  to  continue  working  for  wages 
should  enter  into  the  social  question  at  least  as 
much  as  is  necessary  to  make  them  understand 
the  duty  of  solidarity  and  the  need  of  organisation 
if  they  would  obtain  the  higher  wages,  the  shorter 
hours,  the  summer  holiday,  and  the  better  con- 
ditions in  other  respects  which  they  must  win  in 
order  to  preserve  in  some  degree  their  spiritual 
and  bodily  powers  and  with  them  that  measure 
of  joy  in  life  which  everyone  may  thus  possess. 
The  first  condition  for  this  is  that  girls  who  live 
with  their  parents  should  cease  to  take  work  at 
other  rates  of  pay  than  those  which  the  wholly 
self-supporting  can  live  on;  and  that  women  in 
general  should  cease  to  think  themselves  meri- 
torious merely  because  they  work — without 
troubling  about  the  harm  their  underpaid  labour 
may  do  to  the  whole  community. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  will  to  elevate  their  own 
lives,  but  above  all  a  more  lively  feeling  for  social 
organisation  as  a  whole  that  these  working  women 
need.  Their  personal  demands  for  education, 
rest,  beauty,  love,  motherhood,  must  be  placed  in 
connection  with  those  of  everyone  else,  so  that 
they  may  begin  to  claim  also  for  others  what  they 


The  Right  of  Motherhood         199 

desire  for  themselves.  Instead  of  making  their 
own  existence  poorer  by  unfortunate  experiments, 
they  ought  to  fill  the  souls  of  other  women  with 
their  dreams  of  a  more  beautiful  life.  And  to  be 
able  to  do  this  they  must  be  constantly  active 
and  on  the  watch,  giving  and  taking  on  every 
hand. 

Thus  innumerable  little  streams  swell  the  flood 
of  wills,  which  shall  one  day  remove  the  old 
landmarks  between  the  power  to  wish  and  the 
compulsion  to  renounce.  Thus  shall  the  woman 
deprived  of  love  be  able  to  forget  her  own  little 
lot  in  the  destiny  of  the  many,  and  in  spite  of  the 
limitations  of  her  own  life  to  feel  that  she  lives 
by  feeling  the  beat  of  humanity's  heart  in  her 
own. 


CHAPTER  VI 

EXEMPTION  FROM  MOTHERHOOD 

To  him  whose  thoughts  go  beyond  the  surface 
of  Hfe  to  its  depths,  the  demand  for  the  right  of 
motherhood  is  a  sign  of  health,  an  evidence  of 
the  existence  in  a  nation  of  the  strong,  sound 
woman's  will  to  people  the  earth,  without  which 
the  nation  shall  no  longer  live  upon  earth.  Even 
if  certain  manifestations  of  this  will  fall  short  of 
the  life-enhancing  purpose,  in  itself  the  will  is  only- 
worthy  of  respect. 

It  is,  however,  significant  of  the  confusion  of  ideas 
on  this  subject  that  the  evidence  of  health  inspires 
terror  in  the  guardians  of  morality,  while  they 
regard  with  calmness  that  tendency  of  the  age 
which  is  charged  with  the  materials  of  tragedy, 
alike  for  the  individual  and  for  the  nation — 
namely,  the  desire  of  exemption  from  motherhood. 

Christianity,  with  its  extension  of  the  idea  of 
personality  and  corresponding  lack  of  considera- 
tion for  the  race,  in  opposition  to  the  world  of 
antiquity,  made  marriage  the  affair  of  the  indi- 
vidual. The  development  of  love  has  carried  on 
the  liberation  that  Christianity  began.     As  stated 

200 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      201 

in  the  first  chapter,  the  champions  of  Christianity 
constantly  admit  the  right  both  to  remain  un- 
married and  to  Hmit  the  birth  of  children,  if  both 
are  only  the  result  of  abstinence. 

To  the  evolutionist,  on  the  other  hand,  only  the 
cause,  not  the  manner,  is  the  deciding  point. 
Danger  to  the  possible  children  or  to  the  mother 
herself;  the  fear  of  pecuniary  or  personal  in- 
sufficiency for  the  bringing-up  of  the  children ;  the 
desire  of  using  all  one's  powers  and  resources  for 
an  important  life-work;  a  Malthusian  point  of 
view  in  the  question  of  population — these  and 
other  motives  are  regarded  by  the  evolutionist 
as  good  reasons  for  limiting  or  altogether  ab- 
staining from  parentage.  And  in  this  respect  the 
individual  is  allowed  freedom  of  choice  also  as 
regards  the  method  which  best  agrees  with  the 
opinion  of  science  on  hygiene,  and  with  his  own  on 
morality  and  fitness. 

As  soon  as  it  is  recognised  that  the  in- 
dividual is  also  an  end  in  himself,  with  the  right 
and  duty  of  satisfying  in  the  first  place  his  own 
demands  according  to  his  nature,  then  it  must 
remain  the  private  affair  of  the  individual  whether 
he  will  either  leave  altogether  unfulfilled  his 
mission  as  a  member  of  the  race,  or  whether  he  will 
limit  its  fulfilment. 

But  as  the  individual  cannot  attain  his  highest 
life-enhancement  or  fulfil  his  own  purpose  other- 
wise than  in  connection  with  the  race,  he  acquires 
duties  also  towards  it,  and  not  least  as  a  sexual 


202  Love  and  Marriage 

being.  If  life  has  given  the  individual  a  lot  which 
renders  moral  parentage  possible,  and  conditions 
which  are  favourable  to  new  lives,  then  the  only 
moral  limitation  of  the  number  of  children  is  one 
which — in  and  by  means  of  the  individual's  own 
life-enhancement  and  that  of  the  children — is  to 
the  advantage  of  the  whole  community. 

But  when  only  petty  and  selfish  reasons — such 
as  considerations  of  the  children's  inheritance, 
personal  good-living  and  voluptuousness,  beauty 
and  comfort — determine  fathers  and  mothers  to 
keep  the  number  of  their  children  below  the  aver- 
age required  to  secure  the  due  increase  of  popula- 
tion, then  their  conduct  is  antisocial.  A  person, 
on  the  other  hand,  who  is  content  with  few  or  no 
children,  because  he  or  she  has  a  work  to  perform, 
may  be  able  to  compensate  society  by  the  pro- 
duction of  another  class  of  value. 

To  these  now  moral,  now  immoral,  motives  for 
having  few  children  or  none  at  all,  must  be 
added  woman's  desire  to  devote  her  purely  hu- 
man qualities  to  other  tasks.  This,  however,  does 
not  refer  to  those  wives  who  are  obliged  to  estab- 
lish their  married  life  upon  their  own  bread-win- 
ning labour  as  well  as  their  husband's ;  a  necessity 
which  for  the  present  hinders  them  from  mother- 
hood although  they  are  continually  dreaming  of 
the  future  child.  It  is  here  a  question  only  of 
women's  personal  self-assertion. 

Women  are  no  longer  content  to  manage  their 
husbands'  incomes,  but  wish  to  earn  their  own; 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      203 

they  will  not  use  their  husband  as  a  middleman 
between  themselves  and  society,  but  will  them- 
selves look  after  their  interests;  they  will  not 
confine  their  gifts  to  the  home  but  will  also  put 
them  in  public  circulation.  And  in  all  these 
respects  they  are  right.  But  when,  in  order  thus 
to  be  able  to  ''live  their  life,"  they  wish  to  be 
"freed  from  the  burden  of  the  child,"  one  begins  to 
doubt.  For  until  automatic  nurses  have  been 
invented,  or  male  volunteers  have  offered  them- 
selves, the  burden  must  fall  upon  other  women, 
who — whether  themselves  mothers  or  not — are 
thus  obHged  to  bear  a  double  one.  Real  liberation 
for  women  is  thus  impossible ;  the  only  thing  possi- 
ble is  a  new  division  of  the  burdens. 

Those  already  "freed"  declare  that,  by  making 
money,  studying,  writing,  taking  part  in  politics, 
they  feel  themselves  leading  a  higher  existence  with 
greater  emotions  than  the  nursery  could  have  af- 
forded them.  They  look  down  upon  the  ' '  passive ' ' 
function  of  bearing  children — and  rightly,  when 
it  remains  only  passive — without  perceiving  that 
it  embodies  as  nothing  else  does  the  possibility 
of  putting  their  whole  personality  in  activity. 
Every  human  being  has  the  right  to  choose  his 
own  happiness — or  unhappiness. 

But  what  these  women  have  no  right  to,  is  to  be 
considered  equally  worthy  of  the  respect  of  society 
with  those  who  find  their  highest  emotions  through 
their  children,  the  beings  who  not  only  form  the 
finest  subject  for  human  art,  but  are  at  the  same 


204  Love  and  Marriage 

time  the  only  work  by  which  the  immortality  of 
its  creator  is  assured.  Another  thing  that  these 
women  who  are  afraid  of  children  cannot  expect  is, 
that  their  experience  should  be  considered  equally 
valuable  with  that  of  women  who — after  they  have 
fulfilled  their  immediate  duties  as  mothers — 
employ  for  the  public  benefit  the  development 
they  have  gained  in  their  private  capacity. 


There  is  no  secret  and  infallible  guide  to  natural 
instinct,  any  more  than  there  is  to  the  tendency 
of  civilisation.  Both  may  lead  the  individual  as 
well  as  the  race  astray  with  regard  to  the  goal 
which  both,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  are 
seeking:  higher  forms  of  life.  In  motherliness, 
humanity  has  attained  what  is  at  present  its  most 
perfect  form  of  life  within  the  race  taken  as  a 
whole.  Motherhood  is  a  natural  balance  between 
the  happiness  of  the  individual  and  of  the  whole, 
between  self-assertion  and  self-devotion,  between 
sensuousness  and  soulfulness.  A  great  love,  a 
power  of  creation  amounting  to  genius,  may  in 
solitary  instances  attain  the  same  unity.  But  the 
immense  advantage  of  the  mother  is  that,  with 
her  child  in  her  arms, — without  being  conscious  of 
a  struggle  and  without  belonging  to  the  favoured 
exceptions, — she  possesses  that  unity  between 
happiness  and  duty  which  mankind  as  a  whole 
will  attain  in  other  departments  only  after  endless 
toil    and    trouble.     But    if    this    personal    self- 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      205 

assertion,  this  personal  joy  in  woman's  conscious- 
ness be  gradually  released  from  its  connection 
with  the  child,  then  this  unity  will  be  broken  up. 

An  incidental  displacement  of  it  was  necessary ; 
for  the  liberation  of  woman — like  every  other 
movement  of  the  kind — involved  precisely  the 
disturbance  of  that  equilibrium  which  had  been 
produced  by  the  pressure  of  superior  force  and  by 
hereditary  inertness,  an  artificial  equilibrium, 
which  could  be  maintained  only  by  pressure  on 
one  side  and  inertness  on  the  other.  It  was 
necessary  that  daughters  should  rise  up  against 
their  fathers'  ideals  of  wives;  sisters  against  the 
brothers'  share  of  inheritance,  which  had  increased 
so  greatly  to  their  cost;  mothers  against  the  view 
of  their  duties  which  kept  them  within  the  sphere 
of  female  animals. 

They  must  carry  through  that  emancipation 
which  has  already  made  it  possible  for  them  to  use 
their  brains — not  only  their  hearts — in  fulfilling 
their  eternal  mission :  that  of  fostering  and  preserv- 
ing new  lives. 

Already  the  educated — nay,  even  the  un- 
educated— mother  of  the  present  day  makes  use 
in  her  care  of  children  of  double  the  brain  power 
but  of  only  half  the  muscular  force  that  her  grand- 
mother employed.  She  knows  better  how  to 
differentiate  between  the  essential  and  the  un- 
essential ;  she  can  by  circumspection  obviate  much 
toil  and  trouble.  And  'when  all  mothers  receive 
the  practical  and  theoretical  training  in  nursing 


2o6  Love  and  Marriage 

children  and  the  sick,  which  must  be  their  form  of 
universal  service  corresponding  to  the  military 
service  of  men,  then  the  problem  will  be  even  more 
simplified  in  the  direction  of  the  impersonal  and 
more  and  more  extended  in  the  direction  of  the 
personal.  The  mother  must  use  her  intelligence 
and  her  imagination,  her  artistic  sense  and  her 
feeling  for  nature,  her  instincts  in  physiology  and 
psychology,  in  order  to  provide  the  child  with  the 
conditions  under  which  it  may  develop  itself  in  the 
best  and  freest  way;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  she 
must  beware  of — remoulding  the  child.  She  will 
in  this  way  gain  much  time  which  at  present  is 
wasted  in  unnecessary  attentions  and  harmful 
education. 

But  avoidance  of  the  personal  charge  is  im- 
possible to  the  mother  without  incurring  the 
dishonour  of  a  fugitive. 

There  are  a  number  of  women  who  think  that 
the  feeling  of  motherhood  can  exist  independently 
of  a  mother's  care  and  responsibility  for  the  child, 
and  that  the  latter  may  therefore  be  taken  charge 
of  by  the  community  and  still  retain  the  treasure 
of  motherly  and  fatherly  affection.  These  women 
can  never  have  reflected  that,  with  human  beings 
as  with  animals,  parental  affection  is  formed  by 
care  and  self-sacrifice;  that  it  rises  with  these; 
that  the  less  demand  is  made  upon  it,  the  poorer 
it  becomes.  When  a  father  for  a  time  takes  the 
place  of  the  mother,  he  becomes  as  tender  as  she; 
when  a  sick  child  exhausts  its  mother's  strength. 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      207 

it  is  nearest  her  heart ;  and  as  the  child  grows  up, 
her  affection  becomes  less  spontaneously  intimate, 
although  instead  it  may  increase  through  personal 
intercourse.  State  care  of  young  children  would 
mean  a  withering  of  the  intimacy  of  parental 
affection.  The  tenderness  evoked  by  the  child's 
bodily  presence  shows,  better  than  any  other 
feeling,  the  unity  of  soul  and  senses.  Without  the 
sensuous  presence,  the  psychical  impression  losei 
its  power,  as  does  the  bodily  impression  without  the 
psychical.  The  instinct  of  motherhood,  like  all 
others,  has  been  formed  through  constancy  of 
external  conditions.  It  is  acquired  through  definite 
sensations  and  associations  of  ideas.  When  cer- 
tain of  these  emotions,  at  first  conscious,  became 
unconscious,  and  were  then  performed  by  lower 
nerve-centres,  the  higher  nerve-centres,  which  had 
formerly  been  occupied,  were  set  at  liberty  for 
higher  uses.  But  if  the  sensations  and  associations 
of  ideas,  which  originally  formed  the  instinct,  are 
weakened,  then  the  instinct  loses  its  automatic 
sureness.  What  worked  easily,  "of  its  own 
accord,  "  as  popular  speech  rightly  has  it,  becomes 
once  more  laborious.  With  the  displacement  of 
the  instinct,  corresponding  dislocations  result, 
though  with  extreme  slowness,  in  the  organ  with 
which  it  is  connected.  Thus  nursing  was  perhaps 
an  acquired  faculty,  which  became  ''natural."  It 
has  now  become  so  difficult  that  among  the  upper 
classes  the  majority,  even  with  the  best  will,  can 
scarcely  perform  this  function  for  a  couple  of 


2o8  Love  and  Marriage 


Ö 


months,  or  perhaps  not  at  all.  Science  is  already 
enquiring  into  the  possibility  of  the  disappearance 
of  the  mammary  glands  and  with  them  of  the 
peculiar  character  of  woman's  breast. 

It  is  often  only  the  future  that  can  decide  what 
is  progress  and  what  degeneration.  But  certainly 
nothing  can  be  more  unscientific  than  to  dismiss 
all  anxiety  about  the  future  with  the  dogma :  that 
the  will  to  live  in  offspring  is  so  strong  that  only 
the  degenerate  do  not  possess  it,  and  that  with  a 
healthy  woman  nothing  can  injure  the  motherly 
instinct. 

To  a  thinker  of  the  evolutionist  school,  every- 
thing is  subject  to  possible  transformation,  and 
nowhere  is  there  anything  at  work  which  can 
''make  no  difference."  There  is  not  a  brain,  not 
a  nervous  system  which  can  evade  even  the 
involuntary  impressions  of  the  street.  These  sink 
into  the  subconscious  soul  and  thence  may  arise 
again  after  many  years.  Not  one  person  is  the 
same — or  will  ever  be  the  same, — when,  for 
instance,  he  comes  away  from  a  lecture,  as  he  was 
when  he  went  to  it.  Some  psychic  waves  have 
always  been  set  in  motion  and  this  motion  is  con- 
tinued to  infinity.  If  this  is  even  true  of  a  notice 
on  a  shop-front,  or  of  a  momentary  feeling  of 
anger  or  joy,  how  much  more  then  must  it  be  so  of 
the  impressions  which  dominate  our  days  and 
years.  Our  conceptions  are  forged  from  the  true 
or  false  metal  of  our  moods  and  become  in  turn 
the  implements  by  which  the  bronze  or  gold  of 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      209 

moods  is  wrought.  All  sanctity,  all  self -culture  rest 
upon  man's  power  of  diverting  certain  thoughts, 
suppressing  certain  conceptions,  turning  aside 
certain  impulses  of  the  will;  of  introducing  other 
thoughts,  intensifying  other  conceptions,  encoura- 
ging other  impulses ;  in  other  words,  partly  utilising 
and  partly  rejecting  certain  states  of  mind.  In 
this  way,  bad  habits  arise  from  one  class  of  moods, 
good  habits  from  another.  When  these  have 
acquired  sufficient  strength,  new  modes  of  action, 
new  plans  of  life  gradually  become  ''natural"; 
new  instincts  are  formed,  in  which  willingness  and 
reluctance  often  stand  in  an  opposite  relation  to 
that  they  occupied  at  the  commencement  of  the 
process.  Sensuousness  and  soul  are  thus  both  the 
creations  of  development,  and  it  is  the  voluptuous- 
ness of  many  thousands  of  years  that  stirs  in  the 
mother  when  she  feels  her  child's  lips  at  her 
breast ;  it  is  the  tenderness  of  as  many  ages  which 
bends  in  the  shape  of  every  new  mother  over  her 
child's  cot. 

However  powerful  these  emotions  of  the  senses 
and  of  the  soul  may  have  become,  there  is  always 
the  possibility — for  the  reasons  just  given — that 
the  mighty  stream  of  tenderness  may  dry  up,  if 
its  supply  be  cut  off,  and  that  thus  humanity  may 
lose  its  most  indispensable  motive  power  in  the 
development  of  civilisation. 

Our  destiny  is  shaped,  not  only  by  what  we  have 
experienced,  but  also  by  what  we  have  turned 
aside  to  avoid  experiencing. 


210  Love  and  Marriage 

Our  conscious  ego  is  made  up  of  our  states  of 
mind,  the  images,  feelings,  and  thoughts  which 
through  our  earHer  hfe  have  become  our  inner 
property ;  and  which  by  certain  processes  are  con- 
nected with  each  other  and  with  our  present  ego. 
The  less  these  images,  feelings,  and  thoughts  in  a 
woman's  past  life  have  been  determined  by  the 
sense  of  motherhood — intuitive  or  actual, — the 
less  valuable  will  be  the  "ego"  she  has  to  assert, 
or  the  destiny  she  shapes  for  herself.  And  the 
woman  whom  no  higher  reason  keeps  from  mother- 
hood is  a  parasite  upon  the  parent  stem.  The 
majority  of  these  women  have  not  even  a  deeper 
meaning  in  their  claim  to  "live  their  own  life." 
They  fritter  themselves  away  in  many  directions 
and  do  not  get  much  profit  by  the  process — since 
it  is  only  great  feelings  which  give  great  rewards. 

These  women,  who  thus  without  more  ado 
renounce  motherhood,  have  they  ever  held  a  child, 
not  in  their  bosom,  but  even  in  their  arms?  Have 
they  ever  felt  the  thrill  of  tenderness  such  a  soft- 
limbed  creature,  made,  as  it  seems,  of  a  flower's 
soft  surfaces  and  fair  tints,  inspires?  Have  they 
ever  fallen  in  worship  before  the  great  and  marvel- 
lous world  that  we  thoughtlessly  call  "a  little 
child's  soul"? 

If  they  have  not,  then  we  can  understand  these 
poor  women,  who  do  not  perceive  their  poverty, 
wishing  to  make  the  rich  as  poor  as  themselves — 
whereas  all  the  poor  should  be  made  rich. 

If    this    ''liberation '[of   woman's   personality 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      211 

succeeds,  it  may  go  with  her  as  with  the  princess  in 
the  story,  who  found  herself  in  the  rain  outside  the 
kingdom  she  had  given  up  for  a  toy. 

In  a  modern  poem  a  woman,  when  offered  as  a 
consolation  the  thought  that  childlessness  will 
spare  her  many  sufferings,  exclaims : 

Spared!     To  he  spared  what  I  was  horn  to  have: 
I  am  a  woman  and  this  my  flesh 
Demands  its  nature's  pangs,  its  rightful  throes^ 
And  I  implore  with  vehemence  these  pains! 

(Stephen  Phillips.) 

When  this  ceases  to  be  the  desire  and  the  choice 
of  woman,  then  the  prophecies  of  pessimistic 
thinkers  of  the  voluntary  extinction  of  the  human 
race  will  be  in  a  fair  way  to  be  realised.  But  in 
that  case  women  would  not  possess  the  nobility 
which  a  logical  reading  of  the  world's  processes 
implies :  they  would  only  operate  like  a  wheel 
unconsciously  rolling  towards  the  abyss. 


To  every  thoughtful  person,  it  is  becoming 
increasingly  evident  that  the  human  race  is 
approaching  the  parting  of  the  ways  for  its 
futiure  destiny.  Either — speaking  generally — 
the  old  division  of  labour,  founded  in  nature,  must 
continue :  that  by  which  the  majority  of  women  not 
only  bear  but  also  bring  up  the  new  generation 
within  the  home;  that  men — directly  in  marriage 
or  indirectly  through  a  State  provision  for  mother- 


212  LovT  and  Marriage 

hood — should  work  for  women^s  support  during  the 
years  they  are  performing  this  service  to  society; 
and  that  women,  during  their  mental  and  bodily 
development,  should  aim,  in  their  choice  of  work 
and  their  habits  of  life,  at  preserving  their  fitness 
for  their  possible  mission  as  mothers. 

Or,  on  the  other  hand,  woman  must  be  brought 
up  for  relentless  competition  with  man  in  all  the 
departments  of  production — thus  necessarily  los- 
ing more  and  more  the  power  and  the  desire  to 
provide  the  race  with  new  human  material — and 
the  State  must  undertake  the  breeding  as  well  as 
the  rearing  of  children,  in  order  to  liberate  her 
from  the  cares  which  at  present  most  hinder  her 
freedom  of  movement. 

Any  compromise  can  only  relate  to  the  extent, 
not  to  the  kind,  of  the  division  of  labour;  for 
no  hygiene,  however  intelligent,  no  altered  con- 
ditions of  society  with  shorter  hours  of  labour  and 
better  pay,  no  new  system  of  study  with  moderate 
brainwork  can  abolish  the  law  of  nature :  that 
woman's  function  as  a  mother,  directly  and  in- 
directly, creates  a  need  of  caution,  which  at  times 
interferes  with  her  daily  work  if  she  obeys  the  need ; 
while  if,  on  the  other  hand,  she  disregards  it,  it 
revenges  itself  on  her  and  on  the  new  generation. 
Nor  could  any  improvements  in  the  care  of  child- 
ren and  domestic  arrangements  prevent  what 
always  remains  above  these  things — if  the  home 
is  to  be  more  than  a  place  for  eating  and  sleeping — 
from  taking  up  time  and  thought,  powers  and 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      213 

feelings.  If,  therefore,  we  are  to  retain  the  old 
division  of  labour,  under  which  the  race  has 
hitherto  progressed,  then  woman  must  be  won 
back  to  the  home. 

But  this  involves  more  than  a  thorough  trans- 
formation of  the  present  conditions  of  production ; 
for  we  are  here  face  to  face  with  the  profoundest 
movement  of  the  time,  woman's  desire  of  freedom 
as  a  himian  being  and  as  a  personality,  and  in  this 
we  are  confronted  with  the  greatest  tragic  conflict 
the  world's  history  has  hitherto  witnessed.     For 
if  it  is  tragic  enough  for  an  individual  or  a  nation 
relentlessly  to  seek  out  its  innermost  ego  and  to 
follow  it  even  to  destruction — how  tragic  will  it 
not  be,  when  the  same  applies  to  half  of  humanity? 
Such  a  tragedy  is  profound  even  when  it  occurs 
in  the  struggle  between  what  are  usually  called  the 
''good"  and  "evil"  powers  in  man — a  form  of 
speech  which  followers  of  the  religion  of  Life  have 
given  up,  since  they  know  that  so-called  crime  may 
also  increase  human  nature  and  human  worth; 
that  what  is  profoundly  human  may  appear  as 
evil  and  yet  be  healthy  and  beautiful,  since  it 
involves  the  enhancement  of  life.    But  infinitely 
greater   will   be   the   tragedy   when   the   conflict 
arises    between    powers    unquestionably    good — 
those  in  the  highest  sense  life-enhancing — and  not 
even  between  secondary  powers  of  this  order,  but 
between  the  very  highest,  the  fundamental  powers 
themselves,  the  profoundest  conditions  of  being. 

That   is    how    woman's    tragic    problem    now 


214  Love  and  Marriage 

stands,  if  we  leave  out  of  consideration  the  egoists 
just  alluded  to  and  turn  our  eyes  to  the  majority: 
woman's  nature  against  man's  nature,  exercise  of 
power  in  order  to  satisfy  the  claims  of  the  member 
of  the  race  or  those  of  the  personality.  If  Shake- 
speare came  back  to  earth,  he  would  now  make 
Hamlet  a  woman,  for  whom  the  question  "to  be 
or  not  to  be"  would  be  full  of  a  double  pathos: 
the  eternal  terror  of  the  human  race  and  the  new 
terror  of  the  female  sex  before  its  own  riddle;  the 
bearer  of  the  most  refined  spiritual  consciousness  of 
the  time,  and  therefore — while  forced  by  circum- 
stances to  make  a  decision — a  victim  of  hesitancy, 
doubt,  and  fortuity.  As  true  as  that  all  life  is  a 
development  of  force,  so  is  it  that  happiness  is 
an  ever  more  complete  use  of  one's  powers,  ever 
richer  in  promise  for  the  future,  in  the  direction  of 
their  greatest  aptitude.  But  when  these  aptitudes 
lead  in  two  contrary  directions,  then  the  soul  is  in 
the  same  position  as  the  wanderers  in  the  legend 
of  Theseus,  whom  the  "pine-benders"  bound  to 
the  tops  of  two  trees. 

The  struggle  that  woman  is  now  carrying  on  is 
more  far-reaching  than  any  other;  and  if  no 
diversion  occurs,  it  will  finally  surpass  in  fanatic- 
ism any  war  of  religion  or  race. 

The  woman's  movement  circles  round  the  per- 
iphery of  the  question  without  finding  any  radius 
to  its  centre,  which  is  the  limitation  of  human 
existence  to  time  and  space;  the  limitation  of  the 
soul  in  the  power  of  simultaneously  giving  itself 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      215 

up  to  different  spheres  of  thought  and  feeling,  and 
the  limitation  of  the  body  in  the  capacity  for 
bearing  a  constantly  increased  burden. 

The  heaviest  cause  of  degeneration  at  the  pre- 
sent time — the  necessity  for  millions  of  women  of 
earning  their  bread  under  miserable  conditions, 
and  the  risk  that  they  may  lose,  some  the  possi- 
bility, some  the  wish,  for  motherhood — may 
disappear,  and  nevertheless  the  chief  problem 
will  remain  unsolved  for  any  woman  who  has 
attained  individually -human  development. 

In  however  high  degree  a  woman  may  be  bodily 
and  mentally  competent,  this  can  never  prevent 
the  time  her  outdoor  work  occupies  being  a  de- 
duction from  the  time  she  can  bestow  on  her  home, 
since  she  cannot  simultaneously  be  in  two  places ; 
she  cannot  have  her  thoughts  and  feelings  simul- 
taneously centred  upon  and  absorbed  by  her  work 
and  her  home.  And  all  that  is  personal  in  her 
home  life,  all  that  cannot  be  left  to  another,  will 
thus  necessarily  interfere  with  her  individual 
freedom  of  movement,  in  an  inward  as  well  as  an 
outward  sense. 

If  the  child  and  the  husband  mean  anything  at 
all  in  a  woman's  life,  she  cannot  allow  another  to 
have  the  affection,  the  care,  and  the  anxiety  about 
them:  she  must  give  her  own  soul  to  this. 

But  then,  on  the  other  hand,  it  will  interfere  with 
her  book,  her  picture,  her  lecture,  her  research, 
just  as  infallibly  as  would  the  trouble  of  in  her 
own  person  nursing  and  taking  care  of  the  child — 


2i6  Love  and  Marriage 

a  trouble  which  she  is  really  able  to  renounce, 
though  with  a  great  loss  of  happiness  and  of  in- 
sight into  the  child's  character. 

In  a  word,  the  most  momentous  conflict  is  not 
between  health  and  sickness,  development  or 
degeneration,  but  between  the  two  equally  strong, 
healthy,  and  beautiful  forms  of  life :  the  life  of  the 
soul  or  the  life  of  the  family. 

Many  women,  who  see  the  necessity  of  deciding 
for  one  or  the  other,  choose  the  former  and  thus 
avoid  or  limit  their  motherhood,  since  they  believe 
themselves  to  have  another,  richer  contribution  to 
make  to  civilisation.  But  would  not  the  race 
have  gained  more  by  the  talents  of  which  these 
gifted  women  might  have  been  the  mothers? 

We  may  pity  for  their  own  sake  the  barren 
women  of  the  aristocracy  or  plutocracy,  who  from 
pure  selfishness  have  refused  to  become  mothers. 
But  they  do  an  involuntary  service  to  the  race,  in 
that  fewer  degenerate  children  are  bom. 

Full-blooded  women,  in  a  mental  or  bodily 
sense,  are,  on  the  other  hand,  the  most  valuable 
from  the  standpoint  of  generation.  When  these 
are  content  with  one  child  or  none,  because  they 
wish  to  devote  themselves  to  their  individual 
pursuits,  then  it  is  their  work,  not  the  race,  which 
receives  the  richness  of  their  blood,  the  fire  of  their 
creative  joy,  the  sap  of  their  thought,  and  the 
beauty  of  their  feelings. 

But  it  may  be — according  to  a  very  moderate 
calculation — that  there  are  annually  produced  by 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      217 

the  women  of  the  world  a  hundred  thousand  novels 
and  works  of  art,  which  might  better  have  been 
boys  and  girls ! 

It  is  nearly  always  the  best  women  who  are  con- 
fronted by  the  tragic  necessity  of  choosing  one 
sphere  or  the  other,  or  of  dividing  themselves  in  an 
unsatisfied  way  between  the  two;  for,  the  more 
they  increase  their  demands  upon  themselves,  the 
more  surely  do  they  feel  this  partition  as  a  half- 
measure. 

Partly  by  economical  necessity,  however,  partly 
by  the  spirit  of  the  age,  the  choice  is  more  and 
more  often  determined  in  favour  of  work,  when  the 
two  alternatives  are  evenly  balanced  in  a  woman's 
own  feelings;  for  the  emancipation  of  women 
has  laid  the  stress  of  feeling  upon  independence, 
social  work,  creation.  This  has  raised  these  con- 
siderations in  the  mind  of  woman  to  the  same 
extent  as  it  has  depreciated  those  of  home  life. 
Want  of  psychological  insight  makes  the  champions 
of  women's  rights  candid  when  they  declare  that 
they  have  never  depreciated  the  tasks  of  the  home, 
but  on  the  contrary  have  tried  to  educate  woman 
for  them.  Schools  of  housekeeping  deserve  all 
recognition,  but  as  regards  creating  greater 
enthusiasm  for  domestic  duties  they  have  not 
hitherto  been  signally  successful.  It  is  because 
their  enthusiasm  has  been  directed  to  every  mani- 
festation of  woman's  desire  to  work  in  man's 
former  sphere,  that  the  calling  of  wife  and  mother 
has  now  lost  in  attraction. 


21 8  Love  and  Marriaore 


Ö 


Viewed  historically,  the  work  of  emancipation 
must  be  advanced  by  this  one-sided  enthusiasm. 
But  now  it  is  a  question  whether  woman,  in  a  new 
way,  will  be  capable  of  being  inspired  by  devotion 
to  her  purely  womanly  sphere  of  activity? 

For  nothing  short  of  this  would  in  the  main  be 
the  solution  of  the  question.  A  return  to  the  old 
ideal  of  womanliness  would  be  as  unthinkable  as 
it  would  be  unfortunate.  A  continued  struggle 
to  get  rid  of  the  ancient  division  of  labour  between 
the  sexes  is  thinkable — and  equally  unfortunate. 
That  woman  should  apply  her  new  will  to  her 
ancient  mission  would  be  the  most  fortunate  solu- 
tion.    But — is  this  even  thinkable? 

The  answer  is  unconditionally  in  the  negative 
as  regards  exceptional  natures,  such  as  now,  in 
their  increased  vitality  and  capacity  for  suffering, 
beat  their  heads  against  the  limitation  of  life  which 
prevents  their  giving  themselves  wholly  either  to 
love,  or  to  the  joy  of  motherhood,  or  to  the  mission 
of  civilisation. 

Here  we  are  faced  by  the  fundamental  cause  of 
the  modern  woman's  nervosity.  She  lives  year 
in  and  year  out  above  her  powers. 

She  still  retains  the  old  consciousness  that  a 
mother  ought  to  be  unselfishly  absorbed  in  her 
mission ;  that  she  ought  to  repose  in  it  with  a  pro- 
found calm;  that  she  ought  therefore  to  allow  the 
inner  voices,  which  urge  her  to  follow  her  instinct 
of  personal  development,  to  remain  unheard. 
Added  to  this,  she  has  the  new  consciousness  that 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      219 

the  bringing-up  of  a  child  demands  the  same  un- 
divided attention  as  the  production  of  a  work; 
that  the  child  is  just  as  sensitive  as  the  work  to  a 
divided  mind,  a  wandering  attention.  She  wishes, 
as  an  authoress  has  aptly  said,  "that  she  could  be 
at  the  same  time  the  mother  of  past  ages:  the 
patiently  bearing  caryatid,  who  was  always  in  her 
place,  with  the  bowl  ready  for  the  child's  thirsty 
lips;  and  the  mother  of  the  present  day:  ever  on 
the  move,  seeking  out  all  new  paths,  quenching  her 
thirst  at  all  the  springs  of  life."  She  becomes 
more  and  more  unique,  by  being  ever  more  firmly 
and  delicately  individualised,  and  in  the  process 
her  desire  increases  to  live  her  own  life  in  every 
direction.  But  at  the  same  time  her  feeling  of 
community  with  the  race  increases,  and  therewith 
her  consciousness  of  responsibility  as  mother  and 
human  being  becomes  more  and  more  aroused. 
The  more  ''egocentric"  she  has  become,  the  less 
does  she  remain  a  family-egoist.  The  demands 
of  her  personality  become  ever  more  definite,  ever 
wider  but  at  the  same  time  more  fastidious  in  their 
choice,  ever  more  difficult  to  satisfy.  Her  growing 
sense  of  personal  dignity  imposes  on  her  an  ever 
stronger  self-control — while  her  whole  being  is 
quivering  with  an  ever  more  delicate  sensitiveness. 
And  upon  this  new  woman,  who  is  already  the 
embodiment  of  unrest,  thirst  for  life,  and  suffering, 
the  hungry,  violent  spirit  of  the  present  day  flings 
itself  like  a  cat  seizing  a  bird.  A  hundred  times  a 
day  such  a  woman  is  forced  to   subordinate  the 


220  Love  and  Marriage 

claims  of  personality  to  those  of  society ;  a  hundred 
times  the  will  of  her  personality  has  to  elude  her 
feeling  of  responsibility.  Perfected  methods  of 
work  may  spare  her  hands  and  her  footsteps,  but 
they  cannot  prevent  her  eyes  from  watching  with 
increasing  disquiet  the  balance  wherein  affection, 
sympathy,  and  responsibility  are  weighed  against 
her  most  intimate  longing,  her  creative  joy,  her 
thirst  for  solitude,  and  her  self-development.  And 
as  first  one  side  of  the  balance  rises  and  then  the 
other,  it  will  always  seem  to  her  that  the  heavier  one 
contains  a  piece  of  living  flesh  cut  from  her  heart ; 
while  the  side  which  is — for  the  moment — lighter 
has  nothing  but  dead,  though  perhaps  golden, 
weights. 

The  brain-woman's  time-tables  know  nothing  of 
collisions.  Her  train-schedule  is  clear:  nursing 
institute  and  kindergarten,  school  and  dormitory 
for  the  children,  whose  number  is  fixed  according 
to  the  requirements  of  society.  The  meals  are 
served  automatically  from  a  common  kitchen ;  the 
housekeeping  is  done  by  adding  up  the  cash-book. 
In  a  costume  designed  for  work  or  athletics,  she 
goes  to  her  study.  When  the  work  is  done,  there 
is  five  minutes*  conversation  on  the  telephone 
with  each  of  the  children;  two  hours'  exercise  in 
the  open  air.  In  the  afternoon,  ten  minutes' 
conversation  on  the  telephone  with  her  husband, 
thirty-five  minutes'  pause  for  reception  of  ideas; 
the  evening  is  given  up  to  meetings  of  a  utilitarian 
or  social  nature.     On  Sundays,  the  husband  and 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      221 

children  are  invited,  when  three  hours  are  set  apart 
for  the  eHmination  of  their  defects,  the  rest  of  the 
time  for  profitable  amusement.  Such  a  woman 
never  has  a  thought  of  the  children  while  at  work ; 
never  wants  to  snatch  ten  minutes*  extra  chat 
with  her  husband,  never  has  promptings  at  night. 
She  w^akes  [refreshed  after  the  hygienic  number 
of  hours'  sleep;  everything  goes  like  clockwork 
— better  indeed,  for  the  woman  of  the  future  is 
never  behind  or  ahead  of  time.  But  love's  selec- 
tion will  probably  not  tend  towards  any  great 
increase  of  this  type,  whose  present  representatives 
seem  physically  and  psychically  so  little  affected 
by  motherhood,  that  for  their  part  one  is  inclined 
to  believe  in  the  stork!  And  with  the  other 
poor,  weak,  and  "sensual"  creatures  the  blood  will 
no  doubt  continue  to  be  "a  strange  sap,"  which 
makes  the  head  hot  with  anguish  when  it  ought 
to  be  cool  for  thought ;  which  forces  the  heart  to 
beat  with  longing,  when  it  ought  to  be  still  for  de- 
ciding ;  which  makes  the  nerves  quiver  with  anxiety, 
when  they  ought  to  be  tense  for  creation. 

And  it  is  the  consciousness  of  this  which  in  her 
innermost  heart  makes  the  new  woman  shy  of  the 
love  for  which  she  longs.  A  little  emotion  she 
will  not  give ;  the  great  one  would  swallow  up  all 
the  forces  of  her  soul,  and  what  would  then  become 
of  the  revelation  of  her  personality,  of  the  word 
she  alone  among  all  beings  has  within  her,  the  word 
for  the  pronouncement  of  which  she  was  bom? 

Mona  Lisa's  mysterious  smile — interpreted  by 


222  Love  and  Marriage 

Barres  as  une  dairvoyartce  sans  tristesse — expresses, 
as  someone  has  said,  the  feminine  individualism  of 
the  Renaissance.  It  is  certain,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  the  feminine  individualism  of  the  present  day 
has  a  clairvoyance  that  is  sorrowful  even  to  death. 

Never  has  the  earth  seen  a  more  complicated  and 
contradictory  being  than  this  woman,  melancholy 
and  wistful,  cold  and  sensitive,  thirsting  for  life  and 
tired  of  life  at  the  same  time.  The  blood  dances 
otherwise  in  her  veins,  sings  another  song  in  her 
ears,  than  it  has  in  those  of  any  other  woman  since 
time  began.  She  sees  through  her  husband  and  is 
a  stranger  to  him;  his  desire  seems  brutal  to  her 
finely-shaded  and  contradictory  moods :  she  is  not 
won,  even  when  she  allows  herself  to  be  embraced. 
She  fears  the  child,  since  she  knows  she  cannot 
fulfil  its  simple  demands.  When  fate  attempts  to 
tune  these  fragile  beings  to  their  full  pitch,  they 
break  like  harp-strings  under  a  rough  touch. 
They  are  only  able  to  live  partially — but  thus 
they  do  not  find  life  worth  living. 

Even  if  such  a  woman  chooses  this  partial  life 
and  gives  herself  entirely  to  work,  she  will  never- 
theless be  still  disturbed,  in  the  domain  of  personal 
self-assertion,  by  the  woman's  nature  she  has  in 
the  main  suppressed;  for  she  will  often'  be  con- 
fronted by  the  choice  of  not  succeeding  at  all  or  of 
succeeding  by  the  means  of  man,  the  means  she 
abhorred  in  him  before  she  herself  discovered  that 
it  is  the  struggle  for  existence  which  gives  the  bird 
of  prey  its  beak  and  claws. 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      223 

She  is  forced  to  lament  in  the  choice  between  re- 
lentlessly seeking  her  own  or  failing;  between  the 
necessity  of  being  hammer  or  anvil,  of  dividing 
herself  in  order  to  give,  or  collecting  herself  in 
order  to  create.  Until  woman  took  up  a  position 
in  the  world  of  public  competition,  she  did  not 
suffer  from  this  necessity.  It  was  thus  that — in 
a  literal  as  well  as  a  spiritual  sense — she  could 
afford  to  develop  affection,  sympathy,  goodness. 
It  is  therefore  a  melancholy  truth  that  woman's 
nature,  as  it  has  become  when  removed  from  the 
struggle  for  existence,  is  profoundly  opposed  to  the 
condition  which  in  the  present  economical  and 
psychological  circumstances  brings  success  in  this 
struggle,  the  condition,  namely,  of  forcing  one's 
way  over  others. 

This  conflict  often  begins  in  a  field  where  woman 
cannot  renounce  her  relation  to  motherhood — 
that  is,  where  she  herself  is  the  daughter.  Even 
in  this  character  she  has  a  choice  to  make,  pain  to 
inflict  and  to  suffer. 

When  we  thus  see  the  woman  of  the  present  day 
placed  between  insoluble  conflicts  on  every  side — 
or  agonising,  if  solved — we  are  no  longer  tempted 
to  agree  with  the  poet's  dictum  that  woman's 
name  is  weakness.  For  in  every  fibre  we  feel  that 
her  name  is  pain. 


Those  men  who,   from    the   observation    that 
woman's  professional  and  brain  work  seems   to 


224  Love  and  Marriage 

stand  in  inverse  proportion  to  her  fecundity,  have 
drawn  the  conclusion  that  woman  must  "return  to 
nature,"  leave  her  brain  unemployed  and  exclus- 
ively bear  children,  are  easily  refuted.  There  is 
no  satisfactory  evidence  that  mental  work  in  itself 
need  injure  woman's  capacity  for  easy  and  happy 
motherhood.  In  the  animal  world,  as  among 
savages,  the  females  easily  bear  motherhood  to- 
gether with  other  great  burdens.  In  civilised 
communities,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  partly  through 
a  lower  class,  whose  bodies  are  overworked,  partly 
through  an  upper  class,  who  overwork  their  brains 
— or  else  do  not  work  at  all, — that  the  physical 
difficulties  of  motherhood  have  arisen.  That  the 
world's  greatest  female  geniuses  have  had  few 
children  or  none,  is  in  full  analogy  with  the  great 
male  geniuses — while  these  men  as  a  rule  have  had 
gifted  and  distinguished  mothers,  an  experience 
which  alone  is  sufficient  proof  that  woman's 
** weak-mindedness"  may  not  be  the  most  favour- 
able state  of  mind  for  the  enhancement  of  the 
race.  No  conclusive  evidence  can  be  adduced 
against  the  statement  that,  when  brain  work  is 
moderate  and  combined  with  proper  care  of  the 
health,  it  may  have  good  effects  also  in  women. 
The  same  is  true  of  bodily  labour.  But  as  both 
are  carried  on  at  prsent,  the  woman,  no  more  than 
the  man,  has  been  able  to  keep  within  the  limit  of 
her  powers.  Therefore  at  present  woman's  studies 
and  bread-winning  labour  involve  dangers  which 
have  been  increased  under  the  spur  of  the  dogma 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      225 

of  equality,  which  has  driven  woman  on  to  show 
that  she  could  bear  everything  that  man  bears — 
that  is  to  say,  more  than  man  or  woman  can 
endure. 

But  when  once  studies  and  labour  have  been 
somewhat  organised,  they  do  not  in  themselves 
involve  anything  that  will  make  the  unmarried 
woman  any  less  fit  to  be  a  mother  of  the  race;  on 
the  contrary,  they  are  certain  to  involve  much  that 
will  make  her  more  valuable.  It  is  thus  not  for 
the  unmarried  woman  that  the  conflict  is  presented 
in  the  form  of  a  choice  between  renouncing — even 
in  the  uncertain  possibility  of  motherhood — the 
development  or  use  of  one's  purely  human  powers. 
And  when  perfect  candour  as  regards  the  sexual 
life  has  become  the  custom  between  the  sexes  even 
from  childhood,  it  will  also  be  possible  for  women, 
during  work,  study,  or  exercise,  to  have  those  con- 
siderations for  health  which  modesty  has  hitherto 
led  them  to  neglect.  In  this  way,  but  not  through 
the  employment  itself,  many  a  woman  has  lost  her 
chances  of  motherhood. 

Thus  the  conflict  does  not  commence  until 
marriage;  and  for  the  exceptionally  gifted,  as 
we  have  already  said,  it  may  be  tragic.  For 
the  majority  it  will  not  become  so  unless  the  wife 
is  obliged  to  earn  her  living  outside  the  home  and 
at  the  same  time  wishes  fully  to  perform  her  duties 
as  mother,  or  when  she  wishes  to  attend  to  her 
personal  business  but  is  prevented  by  a  large  family 
from  so  doing. 


226  Love  and  Marriage 

The  question  is  thus  for  the  majority:  either 
the  abandonment  of  the  work  which  produces  a 
living,  or  the  Hmitation  of  the  number  of  children. 

The  first  alternative  will  be  dealt  with  later. 
As  for  the  second,  it  is  here  that  the  main  conflict 
takes  place. 

It  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  ennobling  of  the 
race,  as  well  as  from  that  of  the  nation,  that  men 
implore  women  to  "return  to  nature"^;  it  is  from 
that  of  civilisation  that  women  now  refuse  nature 
their  allegiance. 

Nothing — even  from  the  national  point  of  view 
— is  more  justified  than  woman's  unwillingness 
to  produce  children  by  the  dozen  or  score.  The 
former  consumption  of  wives,  for  a  man  between 
fifty  and  sixty,  was  seldom  less  than  three  wives 
in  succession  and  as  a  rule  half  the  children  of  each 
of  them.  Limitation  of  the  number  of  children — 
apart  from  other  sociological  points  of  view — has 
above  all  the  advantage,  that  many  children  of  poor 
quality  return  a  low  interest  upon  the  capital  of 
working-powers  and  other  expenses  that  their 
birth  and  bringing-up  cost,  while  a  smaller  num- 
ber of  fully  efficient  children  return  a  high  rate  of 
interest  in  the  shape  of  increased  working-powers, 
as  is  sufficiently  shown  by  the  prosperity  of 
France. 

^  As  far  as  England  is  concerned  I  will  here  only  remind  my 
readers  of  Gallon's  contributions  to  this  subject ;  of  Geddes  and 
Thomson's  Evolution  of  Sex;  of  Havelock  Ellis's  Man  and 
Woman,  Sex  in  Relation  to  Society,  etc. 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      227 

But  when  we  turn  to  the  question,  up  to  what 
point  the  limitation  may  be  unattended  with 
danger  either  to  the  nation  or  to  the  individual, 
then  opinion  is  so  sharply  divided  that  to  any 
unprejudiced  examination  it  must  seem  premature 
at  present  to  lay  down  the  line  of  development  of 
the  woman's  question  as  coinciding  with  the 
limitation  of  the  number  of  children.  Even  if  it 
be  finally  agreed  that  a  nation's  welfare  demands 
of  the  women  who  ought  and  can  be  mothers,  the 
birth  and  upbringing  of  but  three  or  four  children, 
it  is  not  decided  that  the  enhancement  of  the  race 
is  thereby  sufficiently  provided  for. 

Besides  which,  the  new  woman  does  not  want 
three  or  four  children,  but  only  one  or  at  most  two. 

Besides  the  danger,  in  this  case  incontestable, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  nation,  and  the  pos- 
sible danger  from  that  of  the  race,  there  is  here  a 
great  danger  for  the  children  themselves.  Their 
childhood's  happiness  demands  a  circle  of  brothers 
and  sisters  and  the  difference  in  age  between  the 
children  should  preferably  not  be  more  than  two 
years.  Not  only  their  happiness  but  their  devel- 
opment is  aided  by  this.  The  position  of  an  only 
child,  or  of  only  son  or  daughter,  usually  results 
in  childhood  in  great  selfishness,  while  in  later 
years,  on  the  other  hand,  it  produces  frequently  a 
heavy  burden  of  duty,  and  thus,  in  both  cases, 
brings  danger  to  harmonious  development. 

One  or  two  children  have  a  poorer,  and  also  a 
more  dangerous,  childhood  than  those  who  among 


228  Love  and  Marriage 

a  number  of  brothers  and  sisters  learn  the  value 
of  mutual  consideration,  of  shared  joys  and 
troubles.  Thus,  without  any  risk  of  loss  of  in- 
dividuality, awkwardness  is  polished  and  sensitive- 
ness strengthened,  which  otherwise  in  later  life 
would  cause  great  losses  of  power.  For  a  circle  of 
school-fellows  can  only  imperfectly  take  the  place 
of  the  nursery's  first  education  in  social  humanity. 

Besides  which  it  may  easily  happen  that  parents 
lose  an  only  child,  or  the  only  son  or  daughter. 

Thus  perhaps  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  na- 
tion, always  from  that  of  the  children,  and  most 
frequently  from  that  of  the  parents,  the  normal 
condition  for  the  majority  of  healthy,  well-to-do 
married  people  must  be,  that  the  number  of  child' 
ren  shall  not  fall  short  of  three  or  four. 

But  in  this  case  a  mother  must  reckon  that  her 
children  will  occupy  about  ten  years  of  her  life, 
if  she  will  herself  give  them  the  nursing  and  care 
which  will  make  them  fully  efficient.  And  during 
these  years — if  her  contribution  in  either  direction 
is  to  have  its  full  value — she  must  neither  divide 
her  powers  by  working  for  a  living  nor  by  constant 
public  activity.  During  these  years,  she  may  con- 
tinue her  own  general  development ;  she  may  take 
occasional  part  in  social  work;  now  and  then  she 
may  have  time  for  mental  production.  But  any 
continuous  and  exhausting  work  outside  the  home 
will,  at  least  indirectly,  diminish  her  own  vital 
force  and  that  of  her  children. 

Thus  the  majority  of  women  will  never  avoid  a 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      229 

conflict,  lasting  for  years,  between  the  renewal  of 
the  race  and  their  own  outward  self-assertion,  in 
whatever  direction  the  latter  may  go;  just  as  little 
as  they  can  avoid  the  conflict  of  the  double  burden, 
now  laid  with  increasing  frequency  upon  women: 
that  of  bread- winning  and  the  increase  of  the  race. 

When  to  all  this  is  added  the  need,  for  both  hus- 
band and  wife,  of  mutual  converse,  and  finally 
the  cares  of  housekeeping,  then  every  thoughtful 
person  must  see  that  woman — and  with  her  so- 
ciety— is  confronted  by  a  problem  in  the  form  of 
''either— or, "  not  of  "both— and. " 

Only  by  society  undertaking  the  support  of 
those  women  who  by  well  fulfilling  the  duties  of 
motherhood  have  produced  the  highest  social 
asset,  can  the  question  of  married  women's  bread- 
winning  be  solved. 

And  only  if  women  put  their  personal  crea- 
tive desire  into  their  mission  as  mothers  during 
their  children's  first  years,  will  the  problem  be 
solved  of  woman's  self-assertion  and  of  her  simul- 
taneous devotion  to  the  mission  of  the  race. 


No,  is  the  answer  of  Charlotte  Perkins  Stetson^ 
and  of  many  others  with  her ;  the  solution  is  State 
care  of  children.  Look  at  all  the  wretched  homes, 
where  the  children  lack  the  most  necessary  mental 

^  See  Woman  a?id  Economics  and  later  works  by  this  American 
authoress,  who  has  many  adherents  in  Europe  as  well  as  in 
America. 


230  Love  and  Marriage 

and  bodily  conditions  for  healthy  develop- 
ment. The  collective  rearing  of  all  children  would 
be  both  better  and  cheaper.  Only  those  women 
who  are  liberated  from  the  toils  of  the  nursery 
and  the  kitchen  are  really  free.  To  the  woman 
accustomed  to  public  activity,  the  tasks  of  the 
home  are  monotonous  and  tiresome.  On  the 
other  hand,  as  a  calling  freely  chosen,  the  care  of 
children  would  satisfy  those  who  have  the  gift  for 
it.  The  majority  of  mothers  are  only  ape- 
mothers  to  their  little  children,  and,  as  the 
latter  grow  bigger,  this  vague  affection  is  replaced 
by  an  obstinate  misunderstanding. 

This  is  what  one  hears  over  and  over  again  at 
the  present  time.  And  the  more  it  is  repeated, 
the  more  certain  do  women  become  that  all 
these  half-truths  are — the  truth. 

Thus  it  is  the  mothers  who  are  not  good 
enough  to  bring  up  their  own  children,  that  are 
expected  to  provide  the  new  illustrious  leaders  of 
the  community.  It  is  the  parents  who  themselves 
lack  the  talent  and  inclination  for  bringing  up 
children,  that — directly  or  indirectly — will  have 
to  superintend  and  select  the  persons  who,  in  their 
place,  will  perform  the  duties  of  parents.  In  other 
words,  they  are  to  discover  and  appreciate  qualities 
that  they  do  not  themselves  possess.  The  trouble 
that  a  woman  cannot  take  for  the  children  to 
whom  she  has  herself  given  life,  is  to  be  borne  by 
other  women  for  ten,  twenty,  or  thirty  children, 
who  are  not  their  own. 


Exemption  from  Motherhood     231 

Even  to-day,  there  is  sometimes  to  be  found  a 
kind  of  primitive  type  of  womanliness,  so  widely 
maternal,  with  such  a  superfluity  of  strength,  of 
tenderness,  of  talent  for  organisation  that  it  is 
too  powerful  for  a  single  home ;  a  type  which  reallj* 
possesses  the  immense  wealth  of  spiritual  elasticity, 
joy,  and  warmth,  that  is  necessary  in  order  that 
every  such  child  should  have  its  full  share  of  these» 
But  most  women  probably  do  not  possess  any  more 
of  these  things  than  is  just  sufficient  for  their  own 
children.  And  with  these  "elected  mothers,'* 
quickly  worn  out  as  they  would  be,  ten,  twenty, 
or  thirty  children  would  be  as  badly  off  mentally 
as  they  would  be  bodily  if  a  single  mother's  milk 
had  to  be  divided  among  them  all.  It  is  even  now 
a  serious  loss  to  society  that  so  many  human  beings 
are  enfeebled  for  life  by  insufficient  nourishment 
in  childhood.  But  according  to  the  plan  we  have 
been  discussing,  which  now  has  so  many  adherents, 
everyone  would  be  starved  in  childhood  as  re- 
gards affection.  It  is  even  now  a  serious  loss  to 
culture  that  school-life  makes  children  uniform. 
Still  more  irreparable  would  be  the  harm  if  their 
fashioning  were  in  the  hands  of  a  thorough-going 
State  care  of  children. 

The  danger  of  uniformity  is  inseparable  from  the 
present  tendency  to  a  hard-and-fast  organisation 
of  society,  with  an  ever  greater  need  of  co-opera- 
tion, an  ever  closer  connection,  an  ever  more 
intimate  feeling  of  relationship  between  its  com- 
ponent parts.    The  organisation  must  go  on,  be- 


232  Love  and  Marriage 

cause,  amongst  other  reasons,  it  is  only  in  this 
way  that  the  individual  ean  now  gain  increased 
freedom  for  development  and  the  use  of  his 
personal  powers.  But  if  these  increased  possi- 
bilities of  satisfying  personal  needs  and  using  per- 
sonal powers  are  to  be  of  value  to  the  individual — 
and  through  him  to  the  whole  community — then  we 
must  also  have  some  individualities  left  who 
wdll  be  capable  of  taking  advantage  of  their 
possibilities. 

And  now  it  is  certain  that  the  home — with  its 
changing  conditions  of  good  and  evil — is  first  and 
foremost  the  best  means  of  forming  an  organically 
developing  sense  of  solidarity  with  the  whole 
community.  Life  itself  creates  in  the  home  an 
interdependence  among  its  members,  a  sympathy 
for  others'  destiny,  a  contact  with  the  realities  of 
life,  and  with  the  seriousness  of  work,  which  no 
institution  can  create.  It  is  by  the  efforts  of  a 
father  and  a  mother  that  the  joys  of  home  are 
provided;  it  is  affection  for  all  which  counter- 
balances the  mutual  rights  of  all;  which  gives  to 
each  his  weight  and  his  counterpoise  in  a  way  so 
natural  that  the  methodical  arrangements  of  an 
institution  w^ould  never  be  able  to  imitate  it. 
And  furthermore,  different  homes,  with  the  variety 
of  different  impressions  they  offer,  are  the  best 
means  of  forming  different  characters  and  peculi- 
arities. However  straitened  and  poor  in  every 
sense  a  home  may  be,  it  nevertheless,  as  a  rule, 
provides   m.ore   personal   freedom   of   movement 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      233 

and  results  in  less  uniformity  than  a  collective 
system  of  bringing-up. 

If  this  is  even  true  of  those  homes  where  there 
can  be  no  question  of  education  in  a  higher  sense, 
then  in  better  homes  the  watchfulness  and  warmth 
of  affection,  its  understanding  and  sensitiveness, 
will  be  the  forces  which  will  induce  and  protect 
individuality  of  character,  and  which  will  most 
surely  discover  what  ought  to  be  counteracted  and 
what  left  alone  for  self -development.  To  this 
must  be  added  the  insight  which  the  parents' 
knowledge  of  themselves  and  of  each  other  gives 
into  their  children's  character,  an  insight  which 
no  stranger  can  possess. 

To  this  it  is  objected  that,  if  every  quarter 
of  a  town  and  every  few  square  miles  of  country 
had  its  "State  nursery,"  parents  would  often  be 
able  to  see  to  their  children,  as  well  as  to  take  them 
home  and  thus  have  an  opportunity  of  using  their 
influence.  But  apart  from  the  circumstance  that 
the  relationship  would  then  in  most  cases  resemble 
that  of  the  French  petite  bourgeoisie  visiting  their 
children  en  nourrice — that  is  to  say,  that  affection 
would  be  shown  in  a  desire  to  amuse  and  deck  out 
the  child,  to  caress  and  play  with  it — the  most 
important  point  is  forgotten.  This  is  that  time, 
more  tim^e,  and  still  more  time,  is  one  condition  of 
education,  and  quiet  the  other.  Souls  are  not  to 
be  tended  like  maladies,  in  fixed  hours  of  treatment. 

There  is  no  sphere — as  parents  are  still  too  apt 
to  forget — in  which  the  psychological  moment  is 


234  Love  and  Marriage 

more  important  than  in  education.  The  action 
which  a  mother  has  seen  in  the  morning,  should 
often  be  first  mentioned  by  the  child's  bedside  at 
night;  the  confidence  which  at  the  right  moment 
might  have  burst  from  the  child's  lips,  will  never 
be  given  if  the  father  has  not  availed  himself  of 
that  moment ;  the  words  which  pained  the  mother 
this  week,  must  perhaps  wait  till  next  before  a 
natural  opportunity  of  effectively  combating  them 
occurs.  The  caress  for  which  a  little  head  fever- 
ishly longs  this  evening,  will  perhaps  to-morrow 
leave  it  indifferent.  The  word  of  affection  which 
might  have  been  all-powerful  at  one  moment,  is 
powerless  a  couple  of  hours  later.  And  above  all, 
direct  advice  or  correction  is  v/orthless  in  compari- 
son with  the  unpremeditated  words  that  parents 
let  fall  in  the  course  of  the  day,  with  the  result  that 
the  child  simply  sees  the  full  human  life  of  its 
parents. 

Only  living  together  on  week-days  and  holidays 
deepens  the  immediate  influence  of  parents ;  only 
this  makes  it  possible  for  the  parents  to  distinguish 
in  the  child  the  accidental  from  the  essential,  the 
newly-acquired  from  the  intrinsic  in  its  changing 
moods. 

And  finally,  when  we  think  we  have  found  that 
children  receive  too  much  warmth  at  home,  and 
that  they  ought  rather  to  be  hardened  against 
life — have  we  then  not  observed  such  "hardened'* 
ones  ?  Have  we  not  seen  how  they  are  beautified 
when  they  are  admitted  to  a  corner  in  a  home; 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      235 

have  we  not  discovered  that,  though  in  intelligence 
they  may  be  far  in  advance  of  their  time,  their 
feelings  are  still  on  a  level  with  those  of  the  savage? 

So  far  from  homes  being  too  warm,  they  are 
seldom  sufficiently  warmed  by  the  only  love  that 
lasts  for  life,  that  of  knowledge  and  comprehen- 
sion. Never  yet  was  a  human  being  too  much 
loved,  but  only  too  little,  or  not  in  the  right  way. 
The  whole  spirit  of  the  age  is  now  opposed  to  the 
fatherly  and  motherly  feelings  of  older  times, 
which  were  related  to  the  blind  affection  of  animal 
parents.  The  affection  that  is  left  must  be 
intensified,  not  weakened. 

The  child's  splendid,  unconscious  happiness  is 
in  making  others  happy ;  in  being  answered  by  the 
smiles  it  produces;  in  showing  outbursts  of  af- 
fection and  receiving  affection  in  return ;  in  feeling 
the  security  and  pride  of  itself  owning  and  be- 
longing to  its  father  or  mother;  in  allowing  this 
delight  to  show  itself  in  play  and  caresses  and 
being  met  with  the  same  delight  without  its  being 
empty.  For  in  a  home,  where  some  seriousness 
prevails,  a  child  soon  learns  that  affection  also 
means  work  and  sacrifice  for  others.  From 
such  affection  the  psychically  personal  tie  of 
blood  is  formed,  while  the  ''natural"  one  grows 
weak,  as  it  is  not  renewed  by  the  apparently  un- 
important daily,  hourly  influence  of  the  intangible, 
invisible  things,  through  which,  as  even  the  Edda 
tells  us,  the  indestructible  ties  are  formed.  In  a 
word,  the  home  of  one's  childhood  is  for  the  develop- 


236  Love  and  Marriage 

ment  of  human  feelings,  what  one's  native  place 
is  for  the  development  of  patriotism.  Even  now 
home-life  suffers  in  a  disquieting  degree  from  the 
school's  increasing  grasp  of  the  older  children; 
from  the  indifference  to  and  disconnection  from 
the  home  which  occurs  when  it  sees  the  children 
only  at  meal- times,  on  Sundays,  and  during  the 
holidays.  But  if  even  the  little  children  were  to 
be  placed  in  the  same  situation,  then  this  evil 
would  be  extended  to  the  most  decisive  years  of 
their  lives. 

To  turn  now  from  parents  and  children  to  the 
new  foster-mothers  of  the  town  and  country 
nurseries,  how  is  it  intended  that  these  shall  suffice 
for  their  own  children,  if  they  are  mothers,  how — 
if  they  are  motherly — are  they  to  content  them- 
selves with  the  children  of  others,  which  they  will 
furthermore  be  compelled  to  lose  over  and  over 
again?  Have  the  women  who  want  to  be 
"freed"  ever  given  a  thought  to  the  siifferings 
of  these  others? 

The  only  possibility  of  endurance  for  such 
nurses  will  be  to  give  the  children  only  that 
general  kindness  that  is  not  enough  for  them. 
Love  they  will  not  be  able  to  give.  No  word  is 
more  abused  than  love',  not  least  by  the  interpreters 
of  Christianity,  who  attenuate  it  into  a  wafer  for 
the  nourishment  of  all,  under  the  name  of  universal 
love.  But  there  is  no  such  thing  as  universal 
love,  or  love  of  humanity ;  there  cannot  be  such  a 
thing;  it  would  be  as  much  a  contradiction  in 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      237 

terms  as  a  quadrilateral  triangle.  There  is  a 
charity  which  pours  itself  out  like  oil  upon  all 
wounds;  there  is  sympathy  in  joy  and  sorrow 
between  individuals;  mutual  help  and  mutual 
responsibility  in  society;  a  common  feeling  of 
rejoicing  or  suffering  with  our  nation  or  with 
humanity  at  great  moments.  But  all  love  from 
one  human  being  to  another  which  deserves  that 
name,  is  in  the  highest  degree  individual;  it  is  a 
selection,  a  separation.  If  it  is  not  this,  it  is 
nothing.  A  woman  chooses  her  children  even 
when  she  chooses  their  father;  and  she  often 
shows  her  preference  among  the  children  them- 
selves. An  individually  developed  mother  rightly 
asserts  her  privilege  of  not  loving  all  her  child- 
ren equally.  She  gives  them  all  the  affection 
they  need  in  the  same  degree ;  she  is  capable  of  the 
same  broad  justice  towards  them  all,  but  she  has 
for  one  of  them  a  more  personal  love  than  for  the 
rest.  The  profound  tragedy  in  the  relations 
between  parents  and  children  is  precisely  this, 
that  this  relationship  is  often  as  passionate  as 
personal  love,  but  without  the  latter's  under- 
standing; that  it  involves  the  claims  of  a  great 
emotion,  but  not  the  power  that  an  individual 
feeling  has  of  becoming  intensified  in  the  same 
degree  as  the  claim  is  increased. 

Individual  love  is  alone  sufficient  for  a  child's 
needs.  An  "elected  mother"  may  perhaps  once, 
or  several  times,  be  able  to  feel  such  a  love  for  one 
or  more  of  the  children  entrusted  to  her.     But 


238  Love  and  Marriage 

she  cannot  have  this  love  for  all  of  them,  and  she 
will  herself  be  torn  asunder  when  one  after  the 
other  the  children  she  loves  are  taken  from  her. 

The  mothers  for  the  State  institution  must 
furthermore  be  found  by  thousands,  if  the  whole 
of  society  is  to  be  constructed  on  this  plan.  And 
then  it  will  be  with  them  as  with  the  clergy,  who  in 
the  earliest  congregations  were  called  by  the  Holy 
Spirit,  but  afterwards  by  the  congregation.  It 
would  be  more  and  more  rarely  the  proved  personal 
aptitude  and  inner  necessity  that  would  decide  the 
choice,  but  in  its  place  the  accepted  standard  of 
professional  training. 

It  is  by  means  of  these  professional  mothers,  as 
is  now  the  opinion,  that  children  would  have 
better  conditions  of  life  than  in  their  own  homes, 
where,  in  spite  of  all  shortcomings,  personal 
responsibility  and  personal  affection  render  im- 
perfection in  the  higher  grades  of  education  less 
dangerous  than  perfection  in  a  lower  grade. 

Exceptional  circumstances  exist,  to  provide  for 
which  the  creche,  the  kindergarten,  the  asylum,  and 
the  industrial  school  must  continue  for  the  present. 
But  instead  of  trying  to  make  these  expedients 
universal,  we  ought  to  endeavour  to  eradicate  the 
causes  which  render  them  necessary.  This  would 
be  road-making  in  the  right  direction.  The  other 
is  a  short  cut,  which  will  infallibly  take  us  longer 
round. 

It  is  true  that  poverty  now  gives  many  children 
unhealthy  homes.     Attack  the  causes  of  poverty 


Exemption  from  Motherhood     239 

then,  instead  of  taking  away  the  children  and  leav- 
ing the  parents  in  misery.  It  is  true  that  much 
parental  affection  is  injudicious.  Then  educate 
people  to  be  parents.  It  is  true  that  parents  now 
increase  the  inheritance  of  certain  children  at  the 
cost  of  the  others.  Then  lessen  the  possibility 
of  this. 

But  do  not  deprive  all  children  of  their  rightful 
inheritance :  home  feelings  and  memories  of  home, 
home  sorrows  and  home  joys,  all  that  gives  its 
peculiar  tone,  colour,  and  perfume  to  every  human 
being's  disposition. 

Do  not  abolish  the  most  important  of  all  col- 
lective education,  that  of  the  children  through 
the  parents  and  of  the  parents  through  the 
children. 

Doubtless,  love's  freedom  will  bring  about  more 
complicated  family  relations  than  at  present. 
From  this  point  of  view  there  seems  to  be  an 
evident  advantage  to  the  children  in  State  institu- 
tions, where  their  lives  would  not  be  so  immediately 
affected  by  dislocations  in  those  of  their  parents. 
But  to  deprive  the  majority  of  children  of  their 
homes,  because  the  minority  might  thus  lose 
theirs,  would  be  a  worse  expedient  than  that  of 
connecting  the  home  more  closely  with  the  mother 
and  developing  human  beings  so  that  they  may 
remain  friends  even  when  they  have  ceased  to  be 
husband  and  wife,  and  may  thus  continue  to  be 
capable  of  co-operating  for  the  welfare  of  the 
children. 


240  Love  and  Marriage 

In  a  word,  it  is  not  the  family  that  ought  to  be 
abolished,  but  the  rights  of  the  family  that  must  be 
reformed;  not  education  by  parents  that  ought  to 
be  avoided,  but  education  of  parents  that  must 
be  introduced;  not  the  home  that  ought  to  be 
done  away  with,  but  homelessness  that  must 
cease. 

The  State  rearing  of  children  would  work  like 
the  feeding  of  foundlings  on  Pasteurised  milk: 
they  sickened  when  they  were  thus  deprived 
of  certain  indispensable  bacilli.  The  people  who 
were  brought  up  on  the  germ-free  milk  of  universal 
benevolence,  in  the  untainted  air  of  uniform  order; 
who  had  their  origin  in  the  love  of  the  majority, 
their  nourishment  from  the  automatic  machine  of 
the  institution,  their  education  in  the  mould  of 
the  school,  their  occupation  as  wax-makers  in  the 
social  hive — these  unfortunate  creatures  might 
find  existence  so  tame  and  so  empty  that  those  of 
them  whom  weariness  of  life  had  not  driven  to 
suicide  before  the  age  of  twenty  might  use  their 
atavistic  longing  for  happiness  in  burning  down 
the  institutions  and  rebuilding  homes  for  human 
beings. 

Can  people  not  understand  that  State  care  of 
children  would  force  upon  the  young  generation 
life's  last  and  hardest  experience,  that  of  not  being 
the  most  important  or  the  nearest  to  anyone,  and 
that  this  heavy  fruit — under  which  old  trees  may 
give  way — might  deform  the  young  ones  for  ever? 
Do  not  people  see  that,  even  if  many  homes  are 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      241 

now  hell,  we  should  not  sink  to  the  lowest 
circle  of  hell — which  Dante's  fancy  made  ice- 
cold — until  the  warmth  was  quenched  which  the 
hearths  of  home  still  throw  out,  and  their  place  was 
taken  by  the  steam-heating  of  the  institution? 
When  existence  is  made  up  of  beings  with  starved 
hearts,  frozen  souls,  obliterated  characteristics — 
what  materials  will  these  afford  for  constructing 
the  society  of  which  they  will  form  part?  Will 
they  even  care  to  produce  children  as  raw  material 
for  the  human  factories;  or  the  necessaries  for 
the  maintenance  of  that  life  in  which  the  elements 
of  personal  happiness  are  wanting?  Will  they 
even  have  the  energy  to  take  a  decision  about  the 
order  of  society  which  robs  them  of  life's  greatest 
values? 


So  wonderfully  strong  is  in  man  the  need  of 
having  some  place  of  his  own,  of  being  among 
his  own,  feeling  himself  at  home  in  one  poor 
comer  of  the  world,  in  a  single  poor  heart,  that 
this  feeling  has  even  the  power  of  clearing  a 
morass  into  a  spring  by  subterranean  ways. 

On  a  railway  journey  in  the  South  I  once  saw 
a  woman,  whose  face,  figure,  and  manners  betrayed 
the  completest  downfall.  This  mother  had  a 
beautiful  six-year-old  daughter.  Never  was  it 
more  horrible  to  see  a  child  at  her  mother's  knee; 
never  did  an  amulet  seem  more  powerless  than  the 
saint's  image  that  a  pitying  hand  had  hung  about 


242  Love  and  Marriage 

the  child's  neck.  But  when  the  child  leaned  to- 
wards her  mother,  she  was  embraced  by  the 
drunken  harlot  with  a  tender  emotion,  which 
restored  to  her  a  spark  of  human  dignity.  And 
when  the  child  read  in  the  looks  of  her  fellow- 
travellers  the  disgust  her  mother  inspired,  her 
dark  eyes  glowed  with  angry  sorrow  and  she  took 
up  before  her  mother  a  position  of  protesting 
affection.  No  one  could  doubt  that  this  child 
ought  to  be  taken  out  of  such  unclean  hands. 
But  I  wonder  whether  a  better  guardian  would  be 
able  to  give  her  the  great  emotion  which  at  that 
moment  dilated  the  child's  soul?  If  in  a  case 
like  this  one  can  even  hesitate  about  the  line 
between  disadvantage  and  advantage,  then  in 
many  other  cases  one  will  be  convinced  that  it  is 
not  necessarily  where  a  child  has  the  best  food,  the 
cleanest  bed,  the  most  uninterrupted  care,  that  it 
will  thrive  best,  but  rather  where  its  soul  may  be 
expanded  by  the  warmest  and  greatest  emotions. 
Moreover  it  is  one  of  the  sacred  mysteries  of  life 
that  most  parents,  in  themselves  and  towards  one 
another,  are  worse  than  the  child  sees  them;  for 
the  last  being  before  whom  a  wretch  casts  off  his 
protecting  rags  of  human  dignity  is  his  child. 

Against  the  wickedness  of  parents,  however,  as 
against  their  ill-treatment,  the  child  must  be 
protected,  and  that  in  a  much  greater  degree  than 
now  by  a  constant  extension  of  the  right  and 
duty  of  society's  intervention  in  these  cases.  But, 
when  it  can  be  avoided,  the  children  ought  just  as 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      243 

little  to  be  deprived  of  the  protection  of  home  as 
the  home  should  be  deprived  of  the  protection 
children  give  to  it,  by  compelling  the  parents  to  at 
least  some  measure  of  self-discipline,  self-control, 
and  self-sacrifice,  whereby  their  souls  are  extended 
beyond  the  individual  ego.  In  the  day  when  the 
''hardening"  atmosphere  of  the  State  institutions 
encompasses  all  children,  human  virtue  will  sink 
with  even  greater  rapidity  than  human  happiness. 


All  that  has  been  said  above  does  not  imply  any 
blindness  to  the  fact  that  even  the  best  homes  are 
now  penitentiaries  in  comparison  with  what  they 
may  become  when  the  formation  of  a  home  has 
become  a  science  and  an  art.  At  present  the 
home  is  fortunately — or  unfortunately — neither 
inspected  nor  rewarded  with  prizes.  But  perhaps 
this  time  is  coming — as  already  in  France  the 
seventh  child  is  brought  up  at  the  cost  of  the  State, 
and  decorations  are  proposed  for  those  women  who 
have  borne  and  brought  up  the  greatest  number 
of  efficient  children.  Then,  if  not  before,  will 
the  ''liberated"  women  perhaps  regain  some  in- 
terest in  the  development  of  their  powers  in  the 
direction  of  the  home. 

What  now  frequently  diminishes  externally  the 
value  even  of  good  homes,  is  that  they  are  arranged 
to  promote  a  kind  of  "aspiration,"  diametrically 
opposed  to  genuine  life-enhancement,  whose  first 
condition  is  that  the  home  in  a  material  respect 


244  Love  and  Marriage 

should  bear  a  relation  to  the  health  and  comfort  of 
its  own  members,  not  the  habits  of  life  of  outsiders. 
What  again  detracts  in  a  spiritual  respect  from 
even  the  very  best  homes  is  that  their  members 
still  retain  the  family  rudeness  and  want  of  con- 
sideration of  older  days,  a  rudeness  which — owing 
to  the  new  sensitiveness,  the  deeper  strength  of 
personal  consciousness — causes  even  from  child- 
hood daily  pain  that,  as  infallibly  as  the 
grosser  faults  of  bad  homes,  poisons  air  and 
food. 

People  still  allow  themselves  within  the  home 
circle  a  scomfulness  of  each  other's  peculiarities, 
a  silencing  of  each  other's  opinions,  a  pry^ing  into 
each  other's  secrets,  a  betrayal  of  each  other's 
confidences,  which  in  daily  life  place  the  members 
of  the  circle  on  a  footing  of  armed  neutrality.  In 
good  homes,  affection,  and  in  inferior  ones  fear, 
stops  them  from  breaking  out  into  open  war;  for 
in  both  cases  all  know  each  other's  vulnerable 
spots  so  well,  that  they  are  perfectly  well  aware 
how  severe  the  conflict  would  be  for  themselves 
as  well  as  for  the  others. 

But  so  long  as  homes,  even  the  best  ones,  have 
these  faults,  institutions  must  exhibit  similar 
results — since  both  will  be  formed  of  the  same 
human  material.  The  institutions,  on  the  other 
hand,  would  not  possess  the  advantages  which  in 
the  case  of  homes  outweigh  the  faults.  These 
faults  may  be  gradually  diminished  by  a  higher 
spiritual  culture.     But  nothing  could  compensate 


Exemption  from  Motherhood      245 

for  what  mankind  would  lose  by  the    abolition  of 
the  home. 


The  conclusion  is  thus  that — however  differently 
the  conflict  must  be  resolved  in  exceptional  cases 
between  woman's  personal  claims  and  her  motherly 
feelings — in  the  main  those  women  who,  in  order 
to  serve  humanity,  renounce  motherhood  or  its 
cares,  are  conducting  themselves  like  a  warrior 
who  should  prepare  for  the  battle  of  the  morrow 
by  opening  his  veins  the  evening  before. 


CHAPTER  VII 

COLLECTIVE  MOTHERLINESS 

At  a  Scandinavian  meeting  on  the  woman's 
question,  a  cantata  was  sung  which  proclaimed 
that  the  human  race  under  the  supremacy  of 
man  had  sttimbled  in  darkness  and  crime.  But 
the  race  was  now  to  be  newly  born  from  the  soul 
of  woman,  the  simrise  would  scatter  the  darkness 
of  night,  and  the  advent  of  the  Messiah  was  certain. 

That  men  during  the  period  of  their  ascendancy 
had  nevertheless  produced  a  few  trifles — for  ex- 
ample, religions  and  laws,  sciences  and  arts,  dis- 
coveries and  inventions — that  the  darkness  of 
their  night  was  thus  at  least  illumined  by  a  Milky 
Way,  all  this  her  majesty  Woman  was  pleased  to 
forget. 

If  man  were  sufficiently  vindictive  to  set  about 
finding  out  what  woman  has  accomplished  in  the 
course  of  ages  to  justify  her  towering  self-esteem — 
or  in  other  words  to  justify  her  challenging  the 
comparison  with  these  works  of  man — then  he 
would  find  only  one  thing. 

When  nature  formed  the  instinct  of  the  race, 
woman  remoulded  it  as  love ;  when  necessity  made 

246 


Collective  Motherliness  247 

the  dwelling,  woman  transformed  it  into  the 
home.  Her  great  contribution  to  cultiire  is  thus 
affection. 

And  this  work  is  in  truth  great  enough  to 
counterbalance  man's  contribution — but  not  to 
make  it  worthless. 


Fortunately  we  hear  less  and  less  about  man*s 
"tyranny"  having  robbed  woman  of  the  chance  of 
also  proving  her  powers  within  his  sphere  of 
activity.  It  is  more  and  more  recognised  that  in 
the  struggle  for  existence  necessity  decreed  that 
woman's  social  work  should  take  the  form  of 
home  work.  The  same  necessity  has  now — in  the 
main — liberated  the  powers  that  were  confined 
in  home  work,  although  woman  has  never,  at  any 
time,  been  excluded  from  the  use  of  her  mental 
gifts.  Such  use  was,  however,  obviously  an 
occasional  one,  so  long  as  the  total  of  her  activity 
belonged  to  another  sphere. 

It  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  their  now  emanci- 
pated personality  that  women — and  many  men  on 
their  behalf — demand  the  right  of  employing  these 
personally-human  powers  in  social  work.  They 
point  in  particular  to  the  neglect  of  the  State  in 
that  sphere  of  duty,  which  is  already  theirs  in  the 
home,  namely,  that  of  protecting  and  improving 
the  existence  of  the  young  and  of  the  weak.  And 
men  are  beginning  to  see  that,  the  more  fixedly 
society  is  organised,  the  more  indispensable  will 


248  Love  and  Marriage 

be  the  co-operation  between  all  its  parts,  if  the 
social  organism  is  really  to  fulfil  its  purpose,  the 
welfare  of  all;  they  see  that  the  nevv^  forms  both 
of  State  help  and  self-help,  which  are  now  being 
sought  after  with  increasing  consciousness  of  pur- 
pose, cannot  be  adjusted  to  actual  needs  tmless  wo- 
man is  able  to  co-operate  with  man  in  every  de- 
partment and  take  part  in  the  legislation  which  is 
to  decide  the  welfare  of  herself  and  of  her  child. 

But  that  the  organisation  of  society  has  now 
progressed  so  far  that  man  is  beginning  to  look  for 
woman's  help,  must  not  be  taken  by  women  as  a 
reason  for  putting  the  whole  blame  for  the  slow 
development  of  society  on  men.  This  slowness 
results  in  an  equal  degree  from  the  hitherto  ex- 
isting nature  of  woman  and  of  man,  from  the 
limitations  of  both,  and  from  their  both  being 
bound  by  the  laws  of  development.  Progress 
towards  higher  conditions  depends  in  an  equal 
degree  on  transformations  in  the  nature  of  both, 
the  ideals  of  both,  the  means  and  aims  of  both  in 
the  furtherance  of  culture.  The  very  beginning 
of  these  transformations  is  the  education  women 
give  to  the  new  generation,  which  is  afterwards 
to  make  the  laws,  to  arrange  the  work,  and  to 
determine  consumption  according  to  the  needs 
they  bring  with  them  into  life  and  the  virtues  they 
have  learned  to  love  at  home. 

Our  time  is  probably  more  conscious  of  its  own 
shortcomings  than  any  other.  But  nothing  is 
more  revolting  to  one's  sense  of  justice  than  when 


Collective  Motherliness  249 

this  consciousness  takes  the  form  of  women's 
megalomania  as  regards  their  own  omnipotence 
for  altering  the  course  of  the  world. 

Following  on  nature's  rough  division  of  the  race, 
nature  and  civilisation  in  conjunction  have  pro- 
duced a  finer  one,  that  of  creator  on  the  one  side 
and  material  on  the  other.  Next  to  being  one's 
self  a  creator,  it  is  a  great  thing  to  be  worthy 
material  in  a  creator's  hand.  And  enhancement 
of  culture  in  a  spiritual  as  well  as  a  material  sense 
is  brought  about  by  the  creators'  success  in  dealing 
with  their  material.  When  that  material  is  hu- 
man, this  means  that  the  creators — or  leaders — are 
successful  in  converting  the  rest  into  real  collab- 
orators with  will  and  judgment  of  their  own. 
Flocks  driven  on  by  shepherds,  or  masses  of 
humanity  led  by  one  no  more  remarkable  than 
themselves,  have  never  had  lasting  effects  on  the 
course  of  civilisation.  Such  effects  only  follow 
when  a  creator  fires  the  multitude  with  the 
enthusiasm  of  new  aims,  or  teaches  them  to  en- 
noble the  means  by  which  they  may  attain  ends 
worthy  of  aspiration. 

Thus,  if  women  are  to  give  the  development 
of  society  a  direction  wholly  different  from  that 
which  man  has  given  it,  this  will  depend  on  the 
appearance  among  women  of  leaders  who  shall 
point  the  way  to  higher  aims  and  employ  purer 
means. 

But  what  gives  us  reason  to  expect  this  of  wo- 
men?   The  reason  cannot  be  sought  elsewhere 


250  Love  and  Marriage 

than  within  the  sphere  of  their  own  creations,  love, 
motherliness,  the  home,  domestic  economy.  If  it 
can  be  shown  that  women  have  brought  all  these 
to  the  full  perfection  of  which  they  are  capable, 
then  there  will  really  be  good  reason  to  believe  in 
their  miraculous  power  in  the  organisation  of 
society. 

But  even  if  we  fully  admit  the  hindrances  which 
man*s  ordering  of  society,  his  legislation,  his 
nature  have  placed  in  the  way  of  women — is  there 
a  single  thoughtful  woman  who  can  maintain  that 
she  herself,  or  that  women  in  general,  have  never- 
theless done  all  that  they  could  within  their  own 
special  sphere;  that  they  have  used  to  the  utmost 
the  opportunities  they  have  possessed?  What 
conscientious  woman  does  not  perceive  that  the 
majority  still  bungle  the  great  discoveries  of  their 
sex,  by  the  way  in  which  they  act  as  guardians 
and  educators  of  children,  as  lovers,  wives,  makers 
of  homes,  housekeepers!  In  every  department 
they  lack  art  and  science,  clearness  of  view  and 
circumspection.  Frequently  they  do  not  possess 
the  first  conditions  for  intensifying  and  refining  a 
happy  love;  that  of  bearing  and  bringing  up 
worthy  children;  that  of  attaining  the  greatest 
sum  of  material  comfort  for  the  members  of  the 
family  with  the  least  expenditure  of  force  and  of 
means;  that  of  arranging  the  spiritual  balance- 
sheet  so  that  the  highest  possible  enhancement  of 
life  will  be  the  net  profit.  Exactly  as  the  majority 
of  men  only  slowly  and  partially  receive  and  trans- 


Collective  Motherliness  251 

mit  the  thoughts,  the  works  of  beauty,  the  dis- 
coveries that  their  leaders  bring  them,  so  also  do 
women  slowly  and  partially  receive  the  leading 
ideas  in  their  sphere. 

There  must  then  be  something,  not  only  in  man's 
nature  but  in  woman's  also,  which  hinders  per- 
fection and  delays  progress. 

If  such  be  the  case — and  the  supposition  need  not 
be  considered  too  bold — then  also  we  may  perhaps 
wonder  whether  mankind  would  really  have  pro- 
gressed so  far,  if  women  had  had  the  lead  during 
past  centuries.  And  if  we  have  ventured  thus  far, 
we  may  also  be  bold  enough  to  ask :  whether  these 
same  women — who  have  been  so  far  from  perfecting 
their  own  work — when  they  come  to  take  part 
in  the  organisation  of  society,  w411  immediately 
perfect  what  man  has  bimgled ;  twist  the  sword  into 
a  ploughshare  and  bring  about  the  Messianic  king- 
dom, where  peace  and  righteousness  shall  kiss  one 
another. 

It  is  not  until  she  has  renounced  all  communion 
with  the  glorification  of  woman  and  the  assertion 
of  woman's  superiority,  that  a  woman  with  a 
sense  of  intellectual  propriety  can  occupy  herself 
with  the  question  of  the  social  work  of  her  sex. 


Those  who  conduct  the  woman's  movement 
form  in  every  country  a  ''right"  and  a  "left," 
each  with  an  extreme  wing. 

The  particular  cult  of  the  right  is  woman  as 


252  Love  and  Marriage 

an  ideal  being.  In  addition,  its  dogmas  include 
Christianity,  monogamy,  and  the  rest  of  the  ex- 
isting arrangements  of  society.  It  seeks  to  place 
woman  on  an  equal  footing  with  man  within  the 
old  forms.  To  the  extremists  of  this  group,  duty, 
labour,  and  utility  are  the  great  words  of  life ;  love 
and  beauty  do  not  come  within  the  scope  either  of 
woman's  rights  or  of  her  obligations.  To  white- 
wash the  stains  on  the  existing  social  edifice;  to 
give  themselves  more  space  by  building  out  a  wing 
on  the  right — this  is  their  chief  concern;  the  main 
building  itself  they  would  preserve  unaltered. 

The  left  has  also  its  deities — but  ''woman"  is 
not  one  of  them.  Its  view  of  life  is  radical;  that 
is  to  say,  evolutionist  and  social.  It  seeks  to 
reform  the  existing  institution  of  marriage  by  a 
new  morality,  and  existing  society  by  a  higher 
organisation,  which  will  express  a  deeper  sense  of 
solidarity.  It  thus  looks  at  the  rights  and  liberty 
of  woman  and  of  man  in  connection  with  the  wel- 
fare of  the  whole  community.  From  this  point 
of  view,  it  regards  woman's  freedom  to  love  and 
right  to  motherhood  as  of  equal  importance  with 
her  right  to  vote  and  liberty  to  work. 

Here,  however,  a  difference  comes  in  between 
this  and  the  extreme  left,  which  would  give  woman 
complete  personal  freedom  of  movement  by  leav- 
ing the  children  in  charge  of  the  State. 

Thus  the  extreme  wing  of  the  old  feminism  meets 
that  of  the  new  on  this  point,  that  to  both  woman's 
activity  is  an  end  in  itself  to  the  extent  that  her 


Collective  Motherliness  253 

right  is  independent  of  whether  this  activity- 
raises  or  lowers  the  vital  efficiency  of  the  whole 
organism. 

In  everything  else  the  opposition  is  diametrical, 
except  on  the  plane  where  all  the  groups  meet :  in 
the  demand  for  woman's  juridical  and  political 
equality  with  man. 

Those  who  demand  political  rights  for  woman  in 
return  for  her  liability  to  taxation  and  her  cares  as 
a  mother,  have  a  well-founded  claim.  But  the 
position  becomes  still  stronger  when  the  claim  is 
based  upon  the  need  of  society  that  every  member 
of  it  should  co-operate  to  further  the  satisfaction 
of  his  own  requirements.  For  modern  society 
corresponds  more  and  more  to  the  idea  of  an  or- 
ganism increasing  in  complexity,  every  part  of 
which  becomes  more  and  more  important  to  the 
whole,  determines  more  and  more  by  its  needs  and 
powers  the  welfare  or  failure  of  the  whole,  and  it- 
self receives  more  and  more  profit  or  harm  from  the 
condition  of  the  whole  organism. 

Society  means  human  beings — men,  women,  and 
children,  dead,  living,  and  unborn — neither  more 
nor  yet  less;  human  beings  banded  together  in 
order  thus  the  higher  to  enhance  the  life  of  the 
individual  and  of  all.  This  combination  takes  at 
first  simple,  then  more  and  more  complicated 
forms  of  organisation:  simple,  so  long  as  their 
needs  are  so,  since  only  his  needs  move  man  to 
organise.  An  increasing  civilisation  means  a 
more  and  more  perfect  satisfaction  of  increasingly 


254  Love  and  Marriage 

complicated  and  higher  needs.  But  as  it  is  our 
needs  that  set  us  in  motion,  any  hindrance  of 
movement  will  also  produce  immediate  suffering 
through  our  not  being  able  to  get  rid  of  the  cause  of 
our  displeasure;  and  indirect  suffering  through  our 
losing  the  sense  of  pleasure  that  movement  might 
have  brought. 

When  the  aim  of  society  is  seen  to  be  that  each 
of  its  members  shall  employ  and  develop  his 
powers  to  the  highest  possible  extent  for  the 
highest  possible  ends,  then  it  will  no  longer  be  in 
abstract  constructions  of  constitutional  law,  but 
rather  in  the  laws  of  human  life,  that  the  criteria 
of  social  well-being  will  be  sought. 

The  order  of  society  must  then  favour  the  life- 
enhancement  of  the  individual;  the  limitation  of 
individual  liberty  must  favour  the  life-enhancement 
of  the  whole — this  will  be  to  the  evolutionist  the 
motive  for  now  extending,  now  limiting,  the  free- 
dom of  movement  of  the  individual. 

The  parallelism  with  the  human  organism  is 
evident.  The  formation  and  activity  of  the  in- 
dividual cells  determine  the  structure  of  the 
whole ;  the  degree  in  which  their  needs  are  satisfied 
determines  the  well-being  of  the  organism.  The 
total  vital  needs  of  the  organism  limit  the  cells' 
expansion  of  force  and  self-determination,  for 
without  the  health  of  the  whole  organism  the  cells 
would  also  languish. 

Every  powerful  movement  of  society — and  the 
demand  for  women's  suffrage  is  already  such  a 


Collective  Motherliness  255 

one — is  brought  about  by  the  will  of  many  in- 
dividuals to  modify  society  in  some  respect,  in 
order  better  to  satisfy  their  own  needs  and  there- 
with those  of  the  whole  community.  Such  a  move- 
ment is  always  opposed  in  the  beginning  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  agreement,  equilibrium,  and 
health  of  the  community.  And  since  a  transform- 
ation in  a  society  never  occurs  uniformly  in  time 
or  degree ;  since  the  need  of  new  forms  is  thus  for  a 
long  time  not  widely  spread,  the  conservatives,  as  a 
rule,  are  right  at  the  beginning  of  their  opposition ; 
they  are  right  even  until  the  transformation  has 
been  taking  place  so  long  that  the  health  of  the 
whole  organism  demands  that  the  class  of  society, 
religious  body,  or  group  of  opinion  in  question 
should  be  given  the  freedom  of  activity  without 
which  it  is  ill  at  ease;  for  the  uneasiness  of  many 
injures  all.  Conservatism  is  thus  finally  in  the 
wrong  by  reason  of  the  ever-repeated  experience, 
that  when  the  vital  force  is  increased  in  any 
important  organ,  it  is  also  increased  in  the  whole 
organism. 

Woman's  suffrage  ought  above  all  to  be  de- 
manded from  the  point  of  view  of  the  social  value, 
and  consequent  right  to  freedom  of  movement,  of 
woman's  powers.  Its  opponents  answer:  "We 
never  thought  of  disputing  either  one  or  the  other. 
Woman  has  already  the  same  power  as  man  in 
degree,  though  not  in  kind,  just  as  truly  as  the 
heart  is  an  organ  equally  essential  to  life  as  the 
brain.    But  the  whole  organism  would  go  under, 


256  Love  and  Marriage 

if  the  heart  insisted  on  usurping  the  functions  of 
the  brain.  Woman  has  become  the  organ  of  the 
emotions  in  human  hfe — but  the  emotions  cannot 
have  a  leading  mission  in  pubHc  affairs.  In  that 
field  woman  must  either  be  untrue  to  herself  or 
lose  her  significance.  It  would  be  an  immense 
loss  to  civilisation  if  she  were  forced  into  the  paths 
of  masculine  egoism,  instead  of  putting  her  whole 
strength  into  the  rearing  of  future  men.  Thus 
new  generations  of  great-minded  and  far-seeing 
men  would  reform  society  in  accordance  with 
woman's  ideals,  and  woman  would  not  lose  her 
ideals  in  party  strife,  where  the  chief  thing  is 
victory  by  any  means  and  the  end  is  lost  sight  of." 
*'If,"  it  was  thus  said  by  a  thoughtful  young 
working  woman, — "if  the  child  saw  both  its  father 
and  mother  striving  for  power,  with  all  the  hard- 
ness and  relentlessness  this  implies,  then  idealism 
would  soon  become  extinct,  whereas,  on  the  other 
hand,  women,  by  unequivocally  making  the  highest 
ideal  demands  upon  fathers  and  brothers,  husbands 
and  sons,  could  bring  about  by  degrees  an  ideal 
condition  of  things." 

This  view,  which  gives  to  woman  the  function 
of  one  central  organ  in  the  social  organism  and  to 
man  the  other,  does  not,  however,  correspond  to 
the  reality.  Just  as  the  individual  is  determined 
from  head  to  foot  by  his  sex,  so  also  is  society 
from  top  to  bottom  bi-sexual;  every  function  of 
government  afreets,  therefore,  all  women  just  as 
much  as  all  men.    At  present,  however,  only  the 


Collective  Motherliness  257 

latter  possess  the  power  of  directly  remedying 
what  hinders  and  furthering  what  enhances  their 
life,  through  also  taking  part  in  the  functions  by 
which  they  are  affected. 

Since  every  '*cell, "  which  indirectly  or  directly 
makes  up  the  social  organism,  is  male  or  female, 
it  is  unthinkable  that  a  higher  organisation  of 
society  would  not  finally  of  necessity  manifest  this 
its  bi-sexual  character.  Like  the  family — the  first 
** State" — it  is  probable  that  the  final  State  will 
appear  as  a  unity  combining  the  male  and  female 
principles.  Or,  in  other  words,  it  will  be  a  ''  State- 
marriage, "  not  as  hitherto  merely  a  State-celibacy! 
Simply  by  performing  the  functions  themselves, 
instead  of  allowing  the  male  cells  to  do  so  on 
their  behalf,  the  female  cells  may  now  as  members 
of  society  experience  their  highest  possible  life- 
enhancement.  So  long  as  women  were  content  to 
let  men  represent  them,  woman's  non-enfranchise- 
ment did  not  disturb  the  well-being  of  the  organism. 
Now,  on  the  other  hand,  the  disturbance  has  set 
in  and  can  be  removed  only  by  change.  But  what 
the  health  of  the  organism  demands  in  the  highest 
degree,  is  that — when  the  female  cells  begin  to  per- 
form their  social  functions — they  should  preserve 
their  sexual  character,  for  otherwise  no  higher 
form  of  development  would  be  attained.  Not 
the  male  sex,  but  the  government  of  society  may 
with  truth  be  likened  to  its  brain,  as  representation 
may  be  compared  with  its  nervous  system.  The 
society  of  the  present  day  suffers  from  one-sided 


258  Love  and  Marriage 

paralysis,  so  long  as  half  of  it  is  excluded  from 
the  possibility  of  making  known  its  needs  through 
the  nervous  system.  And  society  suffers  from  this 
condition  just  as  much  as  the  body  would  from  a 
corresponding  state.  We  can  best  see  this  by 
observing  that  society  where  the  whole  body  is 
paralysed  and  only  the  head  acts,  namely  Russia. 
There  only  the  wounds  bear  witness  that  the 
organism  as  a  whole  is  alive.  But  all  the  societies 
of  Europe  now  include  within  themselves  a  Russia, 
that  part  of  the  community  which  Camilla  Collet 
rightly  called  "the  Camp  of  Silence."  From  the 
same  inner  necessity  that  prompted  a  number  of 
the  men  in  those  countries  whose  condition  once 
was  like  that  of  Russia  to  shake  off  the  care  of  a 
parental  government  and  take  upon  themselves  the 
liberty  of  making  known  their  own  needs,  of  them- 
selves deciding  the  conditions  for  their  well-being, 
must  women — and  the  labouring  classes — win  this 
right.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  female  half  will 
work  more  perfectly  or  with  less  danger  than  the 
male.  But  it  means  that  the  whole  organism  will 
work  more,  will  fare  better,  and  will  be  developed 
to  a  higher  condition.  Those  at  present  in  posses- 
sion are  challenged  by  women  as  by  working  men, 
when  they  assert  that  they  fully  secure  the  in- 
terests of  the  unrepresented  and  direct  their  forces 
satisfactorily.  And  it  may  not  be  they,  contented 
as  they  are  with  their  power  and  with  themselves, 
but  the  discontented  that  we  should  listen  to,  if 
higher  conditions  are  to  be  attained^ 


Collective  Motherliness  259 

To  these  general  considerations  must  be  added, 
in  the  case  of  the  smaller  nations,  this:  that  the 
more  alive  and  thoroughly  active  the  whole  social 
body  is,  the  more  power  of  resistance  it  will 
possess  in  the  struggle  for  its  existence.  Those 
nations,  in  which  every  person  can  protect  his 
own  interests  in  and  with  those  of  the  community, 
will — other  conditions  being  equal — surpass  the 
others,  as  an  army  of  athletes  would  overcome 
one  of  invalids. 


Society  is  confronted  by  tasks  of  increasing 
complexity.  A  force  hitherto  unused,  that  of 
woman,  now  become  socially  conscious,  offers  its 
co-operation  in  dealing  with  them. 

All  thinking  persons  desire  new  conditions  with 
growing  earnestness.  But  new  conditions  do  not 
arise,  as  the  socialist  is  far  too  willing  to  believe, 
through  new  external  relations  alone ;  nor  through 
new  ideas  and  discoveries,  as  the  man  of  science 
with  his  bias  is  too  apt  to  think.  New  conditions 
arise  above  all  through  new  human  beings,  new 
souls,  new  emotions.  Only  these  form  new  plans 
of  life,  new  modes  of  action ;  only  these  revalue  the 
objects  which  are  then  pursued  day  by  day  by 
innumerable  individuals.  A  new  idea  becomes 
feeling  and  motive  power,  at  first  with  one  in- 
dividual, then  with  a  few,  then  with  many,  and 
finally  with  all.  He  who  has  been  able  to  witness 
this  with  regard  to  any  particular  idea,  knows  that 


26o  Love  and  Marriage 

it  comes  about  as  in  the  spring,  when  first  a  solitary 
birch-tree  on  the  sunny  side  unfolds  its  golden- 
green  banner:  then  the  veil  of  yellow,  reddish- 
brown,  and  green  is  drawn  closer  and  closer  over 
the  grey,  till  finally  all  the  tree-tops  are  rounded 
and  full,  all  colours  subdued  to  one  shade,  and  one 
scarcely  remembers  what  it  was  like  in  the  play  of 
shifting  colours,  when  the  wild  cherry  gleamed 
white  among  the  green,  the  dandelions  spread 
themselves  in  wild  profusion  among  the  grass,  the 
lilies  of  the  valley  peeped  out  from  the  sheath  of 
their  leaves,  and  the  cuckoo  called  in  the  summer. 
Emotions  are  the  sap  which  rises  when  the 
human  landscape  thus  changes  colour  and  form. 
Therefore  no  profound  spiritual  transformation 
has  ever  taken  place  unless  women  have  taken 
part  in  it.  It  is  upon  this  great  power  of  woman, 
already  indirectly  effective,  that  we  may  with 
reason  base  the  hope  of  her  direct  exertion  of  force 
becoming  even  more  effective — if  with  it  she 
preserves  her  womanly  character. 

Precisely  as  the  stricter  sexual  morality  made 
woman's  love  more  soulful — till  she  can  now  claim 
love's  freedom,  since  she  has  a  new  contribution 
to  make  therewith — so  the  hindering  of  woman's 
external  activity  dammed  up  her  emotional  life. 
Under  the  division  of  labour  into  a  "manly"  and  a 
"womanly"  field,  woman's  peculiar  character 
became  more  established;  her  feeling  became 
intensified  in  the  direction  in  which  she  is  now 
ready  to  use  it  in  the  immediate  service  of  hu- 


Collective  Motherliness  261 

manity.  Tenderness  distinguishes  her  whole  way 
of  thinl^ing  and  feeling,  of  wishing  and  working. 
Thus  has  she  reached  that  dissimilarity  to  man, 
which  she  must  now  maintain  in  a  public  capacity. 
It  is  as  natural  as  it  is  fortunate  that  woman 
should  come  forward  with  her  claims  to  partici- 
pation in  social  duties  and  social  rights  just  in  our 
time,  when  the  idea  of  interconnection,  the  sense 
of  solidarity,  has  become  increasingly  conscious  in 
every  nation,  as  well  as  between  the  nations.  For 
a  clearer  idea  of  interconnection  will  have  the 
effect  of  saving  woman  from  a  number  of  man's 
mistakes;  a  profounder  sense  of  solidarity  from  a 
number  of  woman's  weaknesses — while  the  best 
traits  of  the  womanly  character  will  be  invaluable 
for  intensifying  the  sense  of  solidarity.  The  man 
and  woman  of  the  present  day  have  become  more 
sensitive  to  their  own  sufferings,  and  this  is  the 
first  condition  for  becoming  more  sensitive  to  those 
of  others.  But  now  the  problem  is  also  really  to 
intensify  and  to  refine  the  feeling  for  others  to  such 
a  degree  that  the  social  organism  will  no  longer 
be  able  to  endure  that  any  of  its  members  should 
suffer  a  hindrance  to  life  in  any  avoidable  way. 
It  is  in  this  respect  that  woman's  deeper  sensitive- 
ness, her  richer  tenderness,  are  given  their  great 
mission.  It  is  true  that — as  was  remarked  in 
connection  with  the  evolution  of  love — it  is  be- 
coming more  and  more  impossible  to  speak  of 
*'man"  or  "woman"  in  general,  since  individual- 
isation  makes  each  sex  more  and  more  dissimilar 


262  Love  and  Marriage 

within  itself,  while  development  makes  them  more 
and  more  mutually  alike.  Average  women  and 
average  men  have  more  understanding  than  feeling. 
But  when  feeling  is  found  in  a  man,  it  is  more 
violent  and  more  transitory,  whereas  it  is  more 
intimate  and  more  effective  in  a  woman.  The 
majority  of  men  as  of  women  seldom  think. 
But  when  man  and  woman  think,  man's  method  is, 
as  a  rule,  that  of  deduction  and  analysis,  woman's 
that  of  intuition  and  synthesis.  She  imites  in- 
stinct and  reflection  as  the  poet  does :  the  thought 
of  both  forms  a  connected  line  of  light  only  in  the 
way  that  a  row  of  lamps  seen  in  perspective  does  so. 
Her  actions — like  his  poems — have  the  uncon- 
scious purpose  of  inspiration. 

These  general  characteristics  are  reversed,  it  is 
true,  in  many  individual  cases.  It  is  thus  certain 
that  the  most  conspicuous  revelations  of  Christian 
charity  have  occurred  in  men.  This,  however,  does 
not  alter  the  fact  that  "the  milk  of  human  kind- 
ness" flows  more  richly  in  women  than  in  the 
majority  of  men. 

This  superiority  is  the  natural  result  of  mother- 
liness,  which  has  gradually  been  developed  in  the 
female  sex  into  immediate  feeling  for  all  that  is 
weak  and  in  want  of  help,  all  that  is  budding  and 
growing. 

But  it  follows  from  this  that  if  woman,  by  her 
participation  in  public  life,  is  to  provide  a  great, 
new,  progressive  element — then  not  only  must  she 
not   lose   the   power   of   sympathy   she   already 


Collective  Motherliness  263 

possesses;  she  must,  on  the  contrary,  intensify 
and  extend  it.  Motherliness  is  not  to  be  found  in 
all  those  who  are  already  mothers,  and  we  have 
arrived  indeed  at  the  strange  position  that — while 
man  is  beginning  to  see  how  much  society  needs 
the  motherly  feeling — a  nimiber  of  women  are  no 
longer  willing  to  become  mothers,  since  their 
personal  development  and  civil  occupation  would 
thus  be  interfered  with.  Nothing  is  more  necess- 
ary than  that  woman  should  be  intellectually 
educated  for  her  new  social  mission.  But  if  mean- 
while she  loses  her  womanly  character,  then  she 
will  come  to  the  social  mission  like  a  farmer 
with  a  complete  set  of  agricultural  implements 
but  no  seed. 

In  all  private  activity  the  individuality  is  the 
best  seed,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  social 
field  women  will  probably  for  a  long  time  be  most 
valuable  owing  to  their  universal-womanly  char- 
acter; for  unfortunately  it  is  still  true  in  public 
life  that  individuality  is  frequently  a  hindrance 
to  co-operation,  which  takes  place  rather  through 
partisanship  in  interests  and  views  than  through 
the  working  together  of  diverging  characters.  It 
is  only  in  rare  cases  that  a  non-party  man  has 
the  chance  of  interposing  in  a  decision.  At 
present,  woman  may  be  able  to  influence  society 
not  as  a  single  personality,  but  rather  as  a  new  and 
powerful  principle,  a  great  contribution  of  a 
hitherto  unemployed  element.  Doubtless  indi- 
vidual    women — through      mental     superiority, 


264  Love  and  Marriage 

intellectual  development,  strength  of  will,  and 
powers  of  work — will  bring  a  great  increase  of 
general  human  value  to  social  work.  But  it  will 
nevertheless  be  upon  the  difference  in  kind  be- 
tween the  nature  of  man  and  woman  that  we  must 
base  our  hope  that  women's  participation  in  the 
work  of  society  will  have  far-reaching  results. 

When  women  think  themselves  able  to  ac- 
complish what  the  whole  aggregate  of  man's 
courage,  genius,  devotion,  self-sacrifice,  and  ideal- 
ism has  hitherto  not  been  able  to  do ;  when  in  every 
difference  of  opinion  on  man's  and  woman's 
nature  they  attribute  to  him  every  feminine  fail- 
ing in  addition  to  his  own,  while  claiming  for 
themselves  all  man's  merits,  then  one  can  be 
certain  only  about  woman's  superfluity  for  the 
time  being. 

Woman's  right  to  participate  in  public  life  would, 
however,  be  in  a  bad  way,  if  she  could  not  bring 
to  it  something  really  indispensable,  new,  and 
peculiar  to  herself. 

This  new  thing  is  her  idealism  and  enthusiasm, 
however  finely  and  easily  they  may  blaze  up, 
since  woman  is  so  much  more  inflammable  than 
man,  so  much  more  eager  to  translate  her  en- 
thusiasm into  action. 

For  only  such  an  enthusiast  and  idealist  is  of 
account  who  can  carry  the  flame  of  his  zeal  in  his 
bare  hand,  in  spite  of  burns,  keep  it  alight  in  spite 
of  gusts  of  wind,  and  thus  step  by  step  come 
nearer    his    ideal.     But    such    enthusiasts    and 


Collective  Motherliness  265 

idealists — whether  male  or  female — are  rare, 
much  rarer  than  genius.  They  are  the  wine  and 
the  salt  of  life,  whereas  the  virtues  that  the 
majority  can  show  are  only  the  daily  bread  on  the 
table  of  society. 

If  then  we  look  at  the  majority,  the  sense  of  jus- 
tice in  man  and  the  feeling  of  tenderness  in  woman 
may  be  the  greatest  virtues.  This  does  not  mean 
that  men  do  not  both  submit  to  and  commit 
immense  injustices,  or  women  immense  cruelties. 
But  it  means  that  the  feeling  which  has  been  the 
strongest  motive  power  in  man's  public  actions — 
in  revolts  and  in  revolutions — is  the  sense  of 
justice,  while  the  feeling  of  tenderness  sets  a 
hundred  women  in  motion  for  one  that  is  moved 
by  an  outraged  sense  of  justice.  Nothing  is  more 
common  than  to  hear  even  from  the  lips  of  a  boy 
the  words:  "It  served  him  right";  while  from 
a  girl  we  should  hear:  '*I  'm  sorry  for  him 
anyhow!" 

It  is  the  masculine  feeling  alone  which  has  de- 
cided the  structure  of  society.  Not  until  woman's 
feeling  has  the  same  scope  as  man's;  not  until  each 
can  counterbalance  what  is  extreme  in  the  other 
— his  what  is  too  weak  in  hers,  hers  what  is  too 
hard  in  his — will  society  in  its  fatherliness  and 
motherliness  really  provide  for  the  rightful  needs 
of  all  its  children. 

Someone  has  maintained  that  the  social  brain 
in  the  course  of  ages  has  developed  more  than 
the  individual:  by  thinking  and  feeling  more  in 


266  Love  and  Marriage 

common,  the  capacity  has  also  been  increased  of 
finding  means  for  furthering  the  common  weal. 

It  is  probable  that  women's  brains  will  show 
their  efficiency  above  all  in  finding  means  of  en- 
hancing and  preserving  life,  which  has  so  much 
greater  significance  for  womxan  than  for  man; 
for  every  life  has  cost  some  woman  infinitely 
more  than  any  man;  every  mangled  body  on  the 
field  of  battle  or  of  labour  has  once  made  some 
woman  happy  with  its  child's  smile,  and  leaves 
some  woman  in  tears. 

But  in  order  thus  to  become  inventive,  women 
must  remain  what  they  now  are :  passionate  in  the 
force  of  their  love,  rapidly  vibrating;  otherwise 
they  will  not  counterbalance  the  partialities  of 
man  in  the  work  of  civilisation.  There  are  per- 
haps no  more  remarkable  pages  in  J.  S.  Mill's 
book.  On  the  Subjection  of  Women,  than  those  in 
which  he  maintains  the  faculty  of  woman — guided 
by  her  individual  observation — for  intuitively 
finding  a  general  truth  and,  unfettered  by  theoris- 
ing, for  unhesitatingly  and  clear-sightedly  applying 
it  in  a  particular  case.  Woman,  he  says,  keeps 
to  reality,  while  man  loses  himself  in  abstractions; 
she  sees  what  a  decision  will  mean  in  an  individual 
case,  while  he  loses  sight  of  this  in  face  of  the 
general  truths  he  has  abstracted  from  reality, 
which  he  tries  to  force  into  abstraction.  These 
qualities  of  woman  make  her  more  unflinching, 
more  rapid,  and  more  immediate  in  her  actions, 
while  at  the  same  time  her  more  intimate  and 


Collective  Motherliness  267 

passionate  feeling  gives  her  more  perseverance  and 
patience  in  the  face  of  trouble,  disappointment, 
and  suffering. 

And  this  opinion  of  Mill  is  confirmed  by  that 
of  Ibsen,  whose  fundamental  view  of  woman  is 
precisely  that  she  becomes  stronger  in  self-asser- 
tion and  tenacity  of  purpose  when  it  is  a  question 
of  values  of  personality,  but  at  the  same  time  more 
devoted  and  self-sacrificing  in  the  personal  sphere. 
He  regards  her  as  less  fettered  by  religous  or  social 
dogmas,  but  with  greater  piety  and  a  deeper  sense 
of  community  than  man ;  he  sees  in  her  more  unity 
between  thought  and  action,  a  surer  grasp  of  life 
and  more  courage  to  live  it.  In  a  word:  he  thinks 
that  woman  more  often  is  something,  because  she 
has  not  tried  to  be  it ;  that  she  more  often  attempts 
the  unreasonable,  because  she  cannot  be  satisfied 
with  the  possible. 

Thus  woman  became,  not  more  perfect,  but — 
fortunately  for  the  fulness  of  life — different,  when 
first  life  differentiated  the  natural  function  of 
mother  and  father;  made  them  into  separate 
beings,  neither  being  superior  or  inferior  to  the 
other,  merely  incomparable.  It  is  this  differenti- 
ation which  must  continue — not  least  in  politics; 
for  otherwise  women's  votes  would  only  double 
the  poll,  without  altering  the  result,  and  their 
participation  in  politics  would  thus  only  be  a 
waste  of  their  precious  powers. 

Thus  even  in  public  life  woman  must  preserve 
the  belief  in  miracles,  the  courage  of  apparent  fool- 


268  Love  and  Marriage 

hardiness  which  her  love  gives  her;  that  courage 
of  which  the  most  beautiful  images  are  already 
to  be  found  in  national  legends.  What  private 
life  has  taught  her,  she  must  now  teach  in  turn  to 
public  life. 

This  is  the  most  difficult  of  all  tasks ;  for  here 
she  must  preserve  the  sudden  anger  or  enthusiasm 
of  her  feeling,  but  purge  it  of  arbitrariness  and 
injustice.  She  must  trust  to  her  feeling's  uncon- 
scious sureness  of  direction,  but  secure  it  against 
the  risks  of  foolhardiness.  She  must  allow  her 
feeling  its  mobility,  but  free  it  from  the  connection 
with  caprice  and  untrust worthiness.  She  must 
keep  her  eyes  for  the  individual,  but  yet  be  capable 
of  lifting  them  to  the  universal. 

To  be  able  to  do  all  this,  woman  must  be  willing 
to  learn  of  man  where  he  is  the  stronger,  without 
letting  man's  scorn  of  womanly  weaknesses  or  his 
pretensions  to  superiority  mislead  her  into  seeking 
a  kind  of  strength  which  cannot  be  hers;  for 
she  could  thus  lose  only  what  is  already  her  own. 


I 


Unfortunately,  all  the  signs  are  not  favourable 
to  the  hope  that  woman  will  pass  through  acade- 
mies and  carry  on  the  service  of  the  State  with- 
out injury  to  her  rapidity  of  view,  delicacy  of 
observation,  and  liberality  of  soul.  "The  con- 
clusions of  science,"  "the  laws  of  history,"  "the 
demands  of  social  security,"  "the  opportunity  of 
compromise,"  and  all  the  other  things  that  men 


Collective  Motherliness  269 

pile  up  in  the  way  of  reform,  are  also  alarming  to 
woman's  courage,  make  her  too  ask  for  proofs 
instead  of  feeling  strong  in  her  intuition. 

In  the  university,  the  government  department, 
and  the  business  office  the  soul  of  woman  also 
may  run  the  risk  of  becoming  tied  by  red  tape, 
officially  dry,  amenable  to  public  injustice,  sober 
in  the  face  of  enthusiasm.  Such  official  and  busi- 
ness women  will  be  as  apprehensive  as  men  of 
being  suspected  to  be  dreamers  and  agitators ;  they 
will  be  as  logical  in  proving  the  imreasonableness 
of  those  who  think  for  the  future.  In  a  word: 
when  women  bear  men's  burdens  they  will  also 
get  their  bent  backs;  when  they  earn  their  bread 
in  the  general  field  of  work,  their  hands  will  also  be 
hardened.  But  we  may  hope — and  everything 
depends  upon  this  hope — that  woman  will  attain 
her  social  power  before  she  has  yet  lost  her  special 
characteristics,  and  that  she  will  then  give  her 
whole  mind  to  bringing  about  new  conditions,  in 
which  she  will  be  able  to  keep  her  hands  soft  and 
her  attitude  upright. 

If  this  hope  fails,  then  woman's  entrance  into 
public  life  will  not  change,  for  a  thousand  years  to 
come,  its  tendency  to  put  safety  before  boldness ; 
to  allow  prudence  to  chill  enthusiasm,  facts  to 
clip  the  wings  of  inspiration,  and  practical  con- 
siderations to  quench  ideas.  The  demands  of 
humane  feeling  will  continue  to  be  blunted  by  the 
sharing  of  responsibility  among  many;  nay,  we 
shall  even  see  woman  uniting  herself  with    the 


270  Love  and  Marriage 

majority  in  curing  the  madness  of  idealists  or — 
if  this  is  impossible — in  rendering  them  harmless. 

It  is  thus  not  by  hymns  of  praise  in  honour  of  her 
sex,  but  by  great  and  inexorable  claims  on  herself 
and  on  all  other  women,  that  each  individual 
woman  can  best  co-operate  in  the  education  of  her 
sex  for  public  life.  Only  the  spiritual  education 
that  each  one  gives  herself  will  prevent  in  the 
political  field  false  estimates  of  value  and  a  con- 
fused sense  of  justice;  for  in  truth  political  life 
in  this  respect  gives  nothing  to  him  who  has 
nothing ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  there,  if  anywhere, 
that  the  words  of  the  Bible  are  applicable :  from 
him  that  hath  not  shall  be  taken  away  even  that 
which  he  hath.  Public  life  in  itself  widens  neither 
the  view  nor  the  heart  of  anyone ;  of  this  our  par- 
ish and  district  councils,  our  municipalities  and 
our  parliament  give  sufficient  evidence. 

It  is  not  only  want  of  education,  but  in  an  equal 
degree  half -education,  that  has  the  peculiar  shady 
side;  and  such  is  the  education  still  provided  for 
the  majority  by  school  and  high-school:  ability  to 
pass  examinations  without  formation  of  personal- 
ity, specialised  knowledge  without  spiritual  culture. 
The  sign  of  this  half-education  is  that  it  swallows 
up  the  individuality  and  makes  the  instincts 
shallow. 

This  evil  will  above  all  be  fraught  with  danger 
to  woman's  peculiar  gift,  intuition.  The  whole 
existing  plan  of  education  aims  at  rendering  more 
acute  the  characteristics  of  man,  and  is  successful 


Collective  Motherliness  271 

therein,  so  that  he  is  strong  though  one-sided  in 
his  half -education.  Woman,  on  the  other  hand, 
becomes  weak  in  hers,  since  it  detracts  from  her 
characteristics  without  giving  her,  however,  those 
of  man.  We  often  find  in  an  unlettered  woman  an 
instinct  for  essentiality  which  the  half-educated 
have  lost  or  to  which  at  least  they  no  longer  dare 
to  trust  themselves.  And,  above  all,  this  is  true 
of  the  qualities  essential  to  woman  herself.  Thus 
women  who  are  working  in  the  service  of  the 
community  often  show  their  resentment  of  the 
gladdening  power  of  other,  young  and  attractive, 
women  even  within  the  sphere  of  social  activity. 
Only  the  form  and  contents  of  the  long  catechism 
could  convince  them  of  a  young  girl's  seriousness. 
Whether  these  beauty-haters  belong  to  the  pietists 
of  Christianity  or  to  those  of  the  woman's  move- 
ment, they  are  agreed  in  the  opinion  that  the 
attractive  woman  is  also  the  less  valuable,  and 
that  men  show  their  lack  of  discernment  in  so 
easily  allowing  themselves  to  be  charmed  by  her. 
Man's  sense  is,  however,  not  so  far  wrong,  even 
though  he  often  takes  appearance  for  reality. 
For  what  man  looks  for  above  all  in  woman — and 
loves  most  deeply,  when  he  finds  it — is  the  joy 
of  goodness.  It  is  this  which  is  made  visible  in  all 
real  charm  and  gains  its  rightful  victory;  and 
only  when  women  possess  this  joy  of  goodness  and 
know  how  to  communicate  some  of  its  charm  to 
public  life,  will  their  participation  in  the  latter  tend 
to  bea^itify  it. 


272  Love  and  Marriage 

In  judging  of  the  position  of  affairs  at  the 
present  moment  we  ought  to  remember  that  it  is 
not  only  mothers-in-law  but  also  daughters-in- 
law,  not  only  the  mistress  of  the  house  but  also 
the  cook,  who  would  receive  the  franchise.  But 
none  of  these  groups  seems  inclined  to  regard  the 
others  as  at  present  endowed  with  the  greatest 
imaginable  perfections — in  private  life!  It  may 
not,  therefore,  be  too  presumptuous  if  an  outside 
observer  should  wonder  whether  it  will  be  given 
to  them  to  exhibit  greater  perfections  in  political 
life. 

In  a  word,  we  must  remember  that  developed 
women  are  not  more  numerous  in  proportion  to 
the  undeveloped  than  the  former  kind  of  men  are 
to  the  latter.  The  same  or  other  prejudices,  self- 
interests,  and  stupidities,  which  on  the  part  of  men 
delay  progress,  will  also  stand  in  its  way  on  the 
part  of  women.  Just  as  one  now  sees  herds  of 
male  ''electoral  cattle"  in  the  wrong  place,  so 
will  one  see  crowds  of  electoral  hens — and  the 
wrong  place  does  not  mean  either  the  right  or  the 
left,  but  the  place  to  which  one  is  driven  without 
personal  choice  and  where  one  nevertheless 
remains  without  a  feeling  of  shame. 

Woman  will,  however,  have  the  advantage  of 
being  able  to  learn  from  man's  mistakes,  and  she 
learns  more  quickly  than  he.  But  only  the  power 
of  being  one's  self  active  where  one  has  the  re- 
sponsibility, and  the  right  of  deciding  where  one 
is  to  act,  are  educative.     Developed  women  will 


Collective  Motherliness  273 

naturally  exhibit  one-sidedness,  like  developed 
men;  not  until  each  sex  comes  forward  with  its 
own  peculiarities  will  legislation  and  administra- 
tion become  universal.  But  universality  is  not  yet 
connection.  Whether  one  strums  with  one  finger  or 
with  all  ten  on  an  instrument,  this  does  not  make 
music.  Not  until  each  finger  does  its  work — 
and  can  play  together  with  the  others — does 
harmony  result,  whether  one  is  speaking  of  in- 
strumental or  of  social  music. 

Before  social  politics  have  replaced  the  politics 
of  self-interest  and  class  instinct,  it  is  probable 
that  the  vital  forces  of  many  will  be  wasted,  and 
among  them  those  of  many  women,  if  in  the  mean- 
time women  enter  political  life.  But  neither  the 
argument  that  women  are  too  good,  nor  that  they 
are  too  immature,  will  weigh  heavily  in  keeping 
them  from  political  work ;  for  they  will  hasten  de- 
velopment in  the  degree  in  which  they  preserve 
their  worth ;  they  will  attain  the  maturity  they  lack 
in  the  degree  in  which  they  participate  in  develop- 
ment. Only  by  being  used  can  tools  be  gradually 
adapted  and  perfected  for  what  they  have  to  do; 
only  by  performing  its  functions  does  the  organ 
become  developed  for  its  purpose.  And  to  this 
must  be  added  the  equally  weighty  argument  that 
the  women  even  now  necessary  for  development 
are,  no  more  than  the  men,  to  be  found  on  one 
side  only  of  a  dividing  line  of  money  or  birth  or 
education.  Only  the  great  democratic  principle — 
equal  possibilities  for  all — involves  in  spite  of  its 


274  Love  and  Marriage 

defects  the  best  prospect  of  the  right  man  or  the 
right  woman  arriving  in  the  right  place.  It  is 
more  important  to  the  community  that  one  man 
or  woman  through  right  of  election  or  eligibility 
should  reach  the  prominent  position  for  which 
nature  intended  them,  than  that  a  hundred  others 
should  make  mistakes  as  electors.  Even  if  women 
are  at  first  on  the  side  of  reaction — and  in  Sweden 
this  would  certainly  be  the  case — their  direct 
influence  would  nevertheless  be  less  dangerous 
than  their  indirect  and  irresponsible  influence  is 
now;  for  there  would  be  a  possibility  of  their 
being  convinced  by  public  life  that,  as  long  as  a 
dominant  social  and  economical  group  maintains 
the  conditions  which  make  innimierable  other 
members  of  society  the  victims  of  militarism  and 
industrialism,  of  prostitution  and  alcoholism — so 
long  will  all  social  work  be  casting  seed  into  the 
snow.  But  even  if  women  did  not  allow  themselves 
to  be  convinced,  but  only  became  a  support  to 
those  at  present  in  power,  this  still  ought  not  to  be 
a  hindrance  to  their  enfranchisement.  Just  as 
nothing  makes  us  more  persevering  than  working 
for  justice,  so  there  is  no  better  evidence  of  the 
purity  of  our  own  claims  than  when  we  adhere  to 
them  in  spite  of  our  knowledge  that  their  attain- 
ment will  for  a  long  time  be  to  the  advantage,  not 
of  ourselves,  but  of  our  opponents. 


Everyone  with  eyes  to  see  is  more  and  more 


Collective  Motherliness  275 

clearly  aware  that  in  our  time  new  paths  must  be 
found.  Women  too  are  more  and  more  frequently 
among  those  who  see  this,  although  the  majority 
of  women,  by  their  ignorance,  their  lack  of  under- 
standing, their  petty  aims,  still  place  obstacles  in 
the  way  of  the  pioneer  work  of  their  male  kinsmen 
and  fellow-workers. 

But  even  among  women  fully  conscious  of  the 
importance  of  social  questions,  there  is  little  per- 
ception of  their  significance.  This  perception 
must  be  raised,  but,  above  all,  the  idea  of  collective 
motherliness  must  be  intensified,  by  fundamentally 
distinguishing  it  from  that  of  benevolence.  The 
latter  may  be  justified  in  the  individual  case. 
But  all  social  work,  which  is  directed  to  the  whole 
community,  must  aim  at  attaining  so  far  in  right- 
thinking  that  all  well-domg  may  disappear.  Col- 
lective motherliness  must  act  more  as  an  eternal 
subterranean  fire  and  less  as  the  soaring  but  soon 
burnt-out  flame  of  a  sacrifice.  It  is  not  enough 
that  the  instinct  of  mutual  help  and  sympathy  is 
more  immediate  in  woman  than  in  man.  Just 
as  affection  is  not  sufficient  for  the  care  of  children, 
if  insight  into  the  vital  laws  of  the  body  and  soul 
is  lacking,  so  also  do  women  need  an  understand- 
ing of  the  biology  and  psychology  of  society  in 
order  to  fulfil  their  individual  tasks  in  national 
economy,  and  to  understand  the  problems  which 
are  summed  up  under  the  name  of  social  organ- 
isation. 

Only  thus  can  sympathy  with  the  victims  of 


276  Love  and  Marriage 

society  lead  women  to  an  ever  stronger  opposition 
to  the  system  which  permits  these  sacrifices. 
They  must  thus  begin — and  that  very  soon — by 
obtaining  power  to  restrict  this,  at  any  rate  where 
it  appHes  to  the  bringing-up  of  children  and  the 
education  of  the  young;  to  places  where  women 
work  or  are  brought  to  justice ;  where  the  sick  and 
aged  are  cared  for;  where  laws  are  made  for  all 
these.  The  majority  of  women — who  are  still  on 
Christian  ground — preach  at  the  best  charity  as 
the  duty  of  the  favoured  and  patience  as  that  of 
the  unfortunate.  But  no  more  than  the  individual 
mother  will  be  satisfied  with  charity  for  her  own 
child,  but  will  have  full  justice — w^hich  implies  full 
possibilities  of  development,  full  satisfaction  of 
wholesome  needs,  full  employment  of  personal 
powers — even  so  will  collective  motherliness  refuse 
to  be  satisfied  with  less  on  behalf  of  any  child  of 
the  community. 

Not  until  the  idea  of  poor-law  relief  is  exchanged 
for  that  of  self-help,  aided  by  society  but  without 
sacrifice  of  pride,  not  until  charity  is  exchanged  for 
justice,  patience  for  assertion  of  rights,  will  there 
be  a  prospect  for  the  many  of  an  existence  com- 
patible with  human  dignity.  We  need  not  fear 
that  the  virtues  of  charity  and  patience  will  there- 
fore disappear:  everyone  will  doubtless  have  only 
too  much  daily  use  for  them — not  only  towards 
God,  but  towards  himself  and  his  neighbour. 

But  as  regards  the  life  of  the  community  their 
time  is  gone  by — or  at  least  will  be  so,  in  proportion 


Collective  Motherliness  277 

as  the  belief  in  a  fatherly  providence  above  is 
exchanged  for  a  knowledge  of  the  power  of  human 
providence  upon  earth.  When  women's  brains  and 
hearts  begin  to  exercise  this  providence  in  such  a 
way  that  their  views  of  life  and  their  social  work  no 
longer  conflict  with  one  another,  then  and  not  till 
then  will  these  brains  and  hearts  become  a  reform- 
ing force. 

Now,  for  instance,  the  majority  of  women  are 
afraid  of  socialism,  as  to  which  however  only  one 
opinion  should  prevail:  that  as  a  party  policy  in 
the  near  future  it  is  the  most  indispensable  motive 
power  of  development,  while  as  a  principle — when 
cleared  of  the  mutually  conflicting  dogmas  of 
different  schools — in  its  widest  meaning  it  expresses 
the  ever  firmer  coalescence  of  society  into  an  ever 
more  intimate  unity,  in  which  the  sincere  assur- 
ance of  the  old  hymn,  'Hhe  good  of  one,  the  good 
of  all,"  will  gradually  be  realised  in  and  through 
the  whole  organisation  of  society.  When  this  has 
made  the  fine  image  of  the  suffering  of  every 
member  through  that  of  one  come  true — then  will 
the  social  State  be  attained. 

The  fear  of  socialism  now  hinders  the  leading 
women  of  the  upper  classes  from  supporting  the 
others  in  conflicts  which  can  result  only  in  the 
victory  of  the  cause  they  themselves  wish  to 
further.  They  are  alarmed  at  the  mere  word 
claims,  behind  which  they  see  the  great  hosts  of 
the  labouring  classes  streaming  on  with  their  red 
flags.     They  therefore  prefer  to  speak  of  the  duty 


278  Love  and  Marriage 

of  voting  rather  than  of  the  right  to  vote.  They 
hope  it  may  be  possible  to  carry  on  poHtics  as 
peacefully  as  a  college  of  teachers,  that  a  public 
meeting  may  be  as  amenable  to  discipline  as  a 
school  class.  But  this  lack  of  a  sense  of  proportion 
misses  both  the  end  and  the  means. 

Women  are  thus  desirous — and  with  full  reason — 
of  abolishing  prostitution.  But  the  first  condition 
is  a  wholesale  raising — for  at  least  fifty  per  cent,  a 
doubling — of  the  present  wages  of  working  women 
and  shop  assistants.  This  increase  can  take  place 
only  by  means  of  trade-unions,  and  then  strikes 
will  be  necessary.  But  the  Christian  champions 
of  the  woman's  movement  have  a  horror  of  both 
these  things. 

The  latter  desire — and  with  full  reason — to  stop 
the  abuse  of  intoxicating  liquors.  But  they  do  not 
see  that  this  is  not  to  be  brought  about  by  pro- 
hibitions and  tea-meetings;  that  only  by  better 
opportunities  and  an  increased  appetite  for  the 
joys  of  home  comfort,  education,  beauty,  and 
nature  can  the  intoxication  of  life  take  the 
place  of  the  intoxication  of  alcohol.  But  these 
enhanced  possibilities  of  life  will  result  only  from 
the  stubbornly  waged  class-war,  of  which  Christian 
women  in  general  disapprove. 

A  ntmiber  of  women  wish  to  abolish  war.  But 
the  same  women  are  not  able  in  education  to  re- 
nounce those  kinds  of  forcible  methods  which  keep 
alive  crude  passions  and  low  ideas  of  justice;  they 
still  believe  that  the  souls  of  children  are  to  be 


Collective  Motherliness  279 

cleansed  like  mats,  by  beating.  It  is  in  vain  that 
all  the  most  eminent  educationalists,  as  well  as 
many  of  the  foremost  criminologists  of  our  time, 
have  again  and  again  condemned  corporal  punish- 
ment— which  one  of  the  greatest  contemporary 
authorities  on  jurisprudence  has  called  the 
*' fruitless  bloodshed"  of  the  centuries — since  ex- 
perience has  incontrovertibly  shown  that  physical 
fear  never  produces  morality  in  the  true  sense  of 
the  term.  Women,  however,  continue  to  lighten 
their  work  in  the  nursery  by  employing  fear.  In 
other  words,  they  themselves  practise — and  train 
their  children  in — acts  of  violence,  such  as  corre- 
spond in  the  life  of  nations  to  the  wars  these  very 
women  wish  to  abolish. 

These  examples  might  be  multiplied.  They  do 
not  prove  that  woman  is  more  ignorant  or  more 
inconsistent  than  man  in  her  social  activity.  But 
they  prove  that  women,  like  men,  will  be  of  very 
little  value  in  their  public  capacity,  so  long  as  they 
follow  the  methods  of  piece-work  rather  than  of 
continuity. 


To  begin  with,  therefore,  it  would  seem  that 
individual  women,  and  not  the  majority  of  the 
sex,  will  represent  that  collective  motherliness 
which  is  to  be  at  the  same  time  far-seeing  and  warm- 
hearted. And  these  women  can  no  more  expect 
to  go  on  from  one  victory  to  another,  than  can 
individual    men.     Those   who — with    their   souls 


28o  Love  and  Marriage 

glowing  against  all  injustice,  their  hearts  warm  and 
anxious  with  sympathy — enter  into  cold  reaHty, 
must  be  prepared  to  experience  what  has  been  the 
lot  of  innumerable  reformers  in  thought  and  action 
among  the  other  sex:  that  they  have  won  the  best 
for  themselves — martyrdom;  but  not  the  best  for 
scciety — victory.  And  it  is  a  poor  consolation 
that  it  is  often  the  best  who  become  martyrs  and 
the  next  best  who  are  victorious.  The  former  are 
those  who  throw  themselves  into  the  fight,  urged 
by  justice  or  love  of  humanity  or  passion  for 
liberty — without  asking  themselves  whether  they 
will  conquer,  or  at  least  without  knowing  what  will 
be  the  answer  to  this  question.  The  latter 
again  are  usually  those  who  within  themselves 
have  answered  it  in  the  affirmative;  for  this 
conviction  of  success  gives  them  the  power  of 
arraying  an  army  behind  them,  and  the  courage 
to  inspire  it. 

The  precursors  among  women  will  also  find  out 
how  unspeakably  difficult  it  is  to  aristocratise  the 
democracy,  which  does  not  mean  simply  cleaner 
hands  and  better  manners,  but  purer  actions  and 
finer  thoughts.  And  if  they  retain  their  sensitive- 
ness— as  they  must — the  leading  women  will  thus 
have  to  suffer  not  only  from  their  own  wounds, 
but  from  the  shame  of  seeing  so  many  of  their  own 
sex  as  incapable  as  the  men  of  sacrificing  their 
own  advantage — or  the  imaginary  advantages  of 
their  country — when  humanity  and  justice  demand 
it.     And  it  will  be  the  fate  of  these  women — as  of 


Collective  Motherliness  281 

so  many  men  before  them — that  the  pure  will,  the 
rich  personality,  which  cannot  bend,  will  be  forced 
to  break. 

Everyone  who  has  had  anything  to  do  with 
politics  must  have  seen  something  of  these  trage- 
dies in  which  a  noble  heart  is  broken  piece  by 
piece,  and  know  how  cruel  these  bloodless  struggles 
really  are. 

Will  the  best  women  endure  to  witness  such 
tragedies?  Will  they  endure  to  see  how  year  by 
year  politics  and  the  press — indirectly,  if  not 
directly,  under  the  sway  of  financial  interest — 
succeed  in  producing  the  greatest  possible  number 
of  half-measures  and  the  greatest  possible  amount 
of  stagnation,  accompanied  by  inevitable  self- 
surrender  on  the  part  of  the  best,  and  unconditional 
self-satisfaction  on  the  part  of  the  others?  Will 
they  endure  seeing  hov/  in  questions  of  culture, 
where  selfishness  can  mean  nothing,  omniscient 
stupidity  decides  the  great  vital  interests  of  the 
nation? 

A  gathering  of  people  on  great  national  festivals 
can  together  feel  and  act  more  greatly  than  each 
individual  for  himself.  But  in  the  everyday  life 
of  nations  the  individual  is  often  better  than  he 
becomes  in  co-operation  with  others.  What  col- 
lective stupidity,  collective  cowardice,  and  collec- 
tive untruthfulness  together  produce  without 
shame  in  public  life,  would  cause  almost  everyone 
who  makes  up  the  mass  to  hesitate  in  his  private 
life.     To  rescue  the  effectiveness  of  the  private 


282  Love  and  Marriage 

conscience — but  at  the  same  time  to  preserve 
the  power  of  the  collective  conscience  for  great 
moments — this  should  be  the  great  task  of  politi- 
cal morality. 


I 


Women  must  bfe  prepared  to  find  that  their 
participation  in  public  life  will  cost  them,  not  only 
various  unjustified  prejudices,  but  also  many  hard- 
ships. They  must,  moreover,  understand  that  it 
will  take  much  time  away  from  their  home;  for 
the  v/hole  thing  is  not  so  simple  as  merely  handing 
in  one's  voting-paper,  reading  the  leading  article 
instead  of  the  feuilleton,  and  going  to  an  election 
meeting  instead  of  to  supper.  If  one  hands  in  a 
voting-paper  without  knowing  how  one  has  voted, 
one's  participation  is  of  no  great  importance. 
If  one  wants  to  know  how  one  is  voting,  this 
involves  the  sacrifice  of  time;  and  when  once 
one  has  begun  to  take  part  in  public  affairs,  one  is 
often  forced  by  circumstances  further  and  further 
into  their  vortex. 

Fathers  of  families,  who  "take  up"  politics, 
are  even  now  the  despair  of  those  families.  And 
what  if  mothers  of  families  begin  likewise? 

This  is  the  kernel  of  the  question.  As  mother 
of  a  family  the  woman  who  takes  part  in  politics 
must  make  her  choice  between  an  outward  direc- 
tion of  her  activities  which  will  be  unfortunate 
for  the  home  and  children  and  a  lack  of  independ- 
ence which  will  be  personally  painful  to  her.     She 


Collective  Motherliness  283 

can  sacrifice  her  private  pleasures,  not  her  private 
duties.  But  it  is  this  latter  temptation  which 
will  present  itself  to  the  woman  of  the  poorer 
classes.  The  wife  of  a  working  man  wants  to 
go  to  an  election  meeting  with  her  husband — 
but  what  of  the  little  children?  There  is  no 
servant.  The  neighbour's  wife?  She  too  wants 
to  go  to  the  meeting.  The  creche?  It  is  closed 
in  the  evening,  for  its  manageress  also  takes 
an  interest  in  public  affairs!  There  is  there- 
fore no  way  out  of  it  but  that  the  wife  must  be 
content  with  her  husband's  judgment. 

In  the  suffrage  question — as  always  when  it  was 
a  question  of  woman's  rights — attention  has  been 
too  one-sidedly  directed  to  the  point  of  view  of  the 
unmarried  woman  of  the  upper  class.  But  these 
are  so  far  from  being  the  most  important  that  we 
might  rather  assert  that  a  mother  of  the  working 
class,  who — with  all  the  trouble  and  privations 
this  involves  for  her — has  cared  well  for  her 
children  both  bodily  and  spiritually,  has  made  a 
happy  home  for  them  and  her  husband  and  there- 
withal has  acquired  for  herself  education  and  in- 
sight in  social  questions,  affords  so  extraordinary 
a  social  power,  that  the  most  just  of  proportional 
suffrage  methods  would  be  to  give  her — and  all 
other  mothers  of  remarkable  children — a  double 
vote. 

We  are  here  again  faced  by  the  difficulty  already 
pointed  out :  that  it  is  precisely  the  most  excellent 
women,  the  most  indispensable  for  the  task,  who 


284  '  Love  and  Marriage 

will  have  to  choose  between  the  duties  of  collective 
motherliness  and  those  of  motherhood,  as  well  as 
between  the  latter  and  those  of  individual  develop- 
ment. During  her  children's  earlier  years  no 
mother  can  well  fulfil  both  these  motherly  calls. 
She  will  be  forced  to  acknowledge  that,  if  any- 
one could  be  said  to  cross  the  river  to  fetch  water — 
and  with  one  of  the  Danaids'  pitchers  at  that — 
then  it  would  be  one  who  should  set  aside  her 
children  for  her  social  mission. 

Here  and  there  we  already  meet  one  or  another 
of  these  strong,  proud,  and  beautiful  mothers  of  the 
twentieth  century,  who  have  lost  nothing  of  their 
full-blooded  womanliness,  but  rather  doubled  it 
through  a  personal  quality  which  year  by 
year  embraces  the  kernel  of  their  being  more 
closely. 

Human  being  and  woman,  citizen  and  person- 
ality— less  than  this  the  social  mother  of  the  future 
cannot  be.  She  has  destroyed  all  bridges  which 
might  take  her  back  to  the  womanly  ideal  of  older 
times :  the  powerful  but  narrow-minded  housekeep- 
er,the  thoughtlessly  devoted  wife.  But  at  the  same 
time  she  has  nothing  in  common  with  the  short- 
sighted woman's  rights  woman,  who  takes  pride  in 
being  a  restless  working-machine  or  a  specialist 
rewarded  by  diplomas  but  otherwise  half -educated. 

She  has  learned  something  from  the  older  as 
well  as  from  the  new  type.  But  she  resembles 
neither,  for  only  completeness  of  life  is  to  her  the 
meaning  of  life. 


Collective  Motherliness  285 


Many  a  little  girl,  leaning  over  her  history  book, 
must  have  been  indignant  at  the  way  humanity 
used  to  be  reckoned  in  past  times :  so  many  men 
— "besides  women  and  children"! 

It  was  long  before  women  began  to  be  counted 
at  all,  and  they  are  still  only  half-counted.  Child- 
ren are  still  under  "besides."  But  some  day 
we  may  perhaps  have  come  so  far  in  our  feeling  for 
what  is  coming  on,  that  we  shall  invert  the  order 
and  reckon  "so  many  children — besides  women 
and  men."  We  shall  then  give  evidence  in  our 
treatment  of  children  of  our  reverence  for  these 
profoundly  wise  and  mysterious  beings,  whom  we 
never  fathom.  We  shall  see  behind  the  figure  of 
every  child  the  infinite  line  of  past  generations, 
before  it  the  equally  endless  ranks  of  those  to 
come.  We  shall  remember  in  our  actions  that  the 
child  is  the  sum  of  these  dead  ones,  the  hope  of 
those  unborn.  We  shall  let  the  child  reveal  itself 
and  receive  its  revelations  with  a  discretion  at 
present  unsuspected. 

The  tragedies  of  the  childish  soul  are  still  waiting 
for  their  Shakespeare,  although  the  child  is  already 
appearing  in  literature  as  never  before.  And  here, 
as  ever,  literature  is  the  precursor  of  the  great 
movement  of  liberty  which  shall  bring  the  child- 
ren's declaration  of  rights  and  make  an  end  of  the 
spiritual  and  bodily  ill-treatment  of  children,  which 
must  appear  tothe  future  as  monstrous  as  negro 
slavery  does  to  us.     It  may  be  that  children  too 


286  Love  and  Marriage 

will  have  their  right  to  vote,  as  well  as  their  own 
representatives  in  the  legislature  and  in  the  courts 
of  law.^ 

It  should  be  the  collective  mothers  who  would 
thus  finally  liberate  the  children  of  society.  It 
will  then  be  seen  that  the  octave  of  the  child's 
soul  was  just  as  indispensable  as  that  of  woman  or 
man,  in  order  that  the  great  harmony  of  himianity 
might  be  complete. 

When  this  happens  the  third  kingdom  will  have 
arrived,  whose  Messiah  the  age  now  awaits.  But 
it  is  not  in  the  lap  of  collective  motherliness  that 
he  will  be  borne. 

Again  and  again  saviours  will  be  bom  to  hu- 
manity. But  always  of  some  young  woman  with 
forehead  pure  as  a  lily  and  deep  eyes.  And 
Bethlehem  will  always  be  there,  where  a  young 
mother  kneels  in  prayer  by  her  child's  cradle. 

*  Every  English  reader  knows  what  Dickens  achieved  in  this 
respect.  I  will  only  remind  them  here  of  Hannah  Lynch 's 
(anonymously  published)  Autobiography  oj  a  Child. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

FREE  DIVORCE 

The  desire  of  the  young  to  abolish  prostitution 
by  means  of  love's  freedom  has  already  been  ad- 
duced as  one  of  the  proofs  of  the  higher  development 
of  sexual  morality.  Another  such  proof  is  the 
desire  of  the  present  day  to  abolish  adultery  by 
means  of  free  divorce. 

The  preachers  of  monogamy  are  afraid  that  this 
desire  will  prepare  the  way  for  an  open  polygamy, 
instead  of  that  which  at  present  is  at  least  secret. 
In  the  press  and  in  the  pulpit,  in  schoolrooms  and 
lecture-rooms,  modem  literature  is  blamed  for 
this  "new  immorality." 

And  yet  we  all  know  that  long  before  our  time, 
married  men  and  their  sons  in  country  houses  were 
too  often  ready  to  seduce  the  wives  and  daughters 
of  their  dependents  as  well  as  the  servants  of  the 
house.  The  wives  and  mothers  of  these  gentle- 
men were  frequently  not  ignorant  of  this — but  they 
were  praised  for  their  wisdom  when  they  pre- 
tended to  suspect  nothing.  It  was  a  matter  of 
common  knowledge  that  not  a  few  married  men 
and  married  women  had  mistresses  and  lovers 

287 


288  Love  and  Marriage 

within  their  own  social  circle ;  and  every  one  knew 
that  in  the  towns  many  men,  during  or  before 
marriage,  had  illegitimate  families. 

Serious  preachers  of  morality  doubtless  reply 
that  they  no  more  condone  this  secret  adultery 
than  they  would  an  open  one ;  that  they  see  in  one 
and  the  other  a  manifestation  of  that  power  of  sin 
which  only  religion  can  vanquish.  We  have  the 
right  then  to  ask,  whether  within  their  own  ranks 
— among  clergymen,  missionaries,  readers — no 
similar  transgressions  occur. 

The  honest  ones  answer  Yes,  but  point  out  that 
this  causes  shame  among  their  fellow-Christians, 
and  that  these  believers  themselves  acknowledge 
that  they  have  sinned.  Such  men  of  the  world, 
who  play  the  hypocrite  to  retain  their  respecta- 
bility, do  the  same  thing.  But  the  great  danger 
to  society  first  comes  in  when  free-thinkers  with  no 
qualms  of  conscience  commit,  and  authors  without 
moral  indignation  describe,  the  sin.  This  it  is 
that  degrades  the  ideal  of  morality. 

Here  we  are  at  the  very  cross-roads  of  the  old 
and  the  new  morality. 

The  champions  of  the  latter  go  on  to  ask  whether 
all  adulterers — children  of  this  world  as  well  as 
children  of  God — in  their  innermost  consciousness 
really  feel  themselves  to  be  sinners.  The  need 
which  impelled  them  was  perhaps  so  imperious 
that  it  justified  them  before  their  own  conscience 
in  choosing  a  lesser  evil  in  preference  to  a  greater, 
when — from  one   cause   or   another — they  could 


Free  Divorce  289 

not  or  ought  not  to  satisfy  the  need  in  their 
marriage. 

And  if  this  be  so,  then  the  exponents  of  the  new 
morahty  may  have  grounds  for  their  opinion: 
that  self-control  cannot  and  must  not  be  the  only 
answer  to  all  the  problems  of  sexual  life;  that  a 
solution  must  be  found  which  shall  by  degrees 
prevent  men  from  wasting,  either  in  unchastity 
or  in  a  celibacy  disguised  as  marriage,  the  strength 
which  belongs  to  the  race.  The  solution  can  only 
be  this,  that  we  not  only  assert  love's  freedom  to 
unite  without  external  tie,  but  also  man's  right 
more  freely  than  at  present  to  loosen  the  tie,  when 
real  union  is  no  longer  possible. 

When  speaking  of  love's  selection,  it  was  put 
forward  that  a  growing  insight  into  the  value  and 
conditions  of  the  enhancement  of  the  race  might 
produce  cases  where  a  marriage  could  be  openly 
broken  without  therefore  being  dissolved.  But 
the  true  line  of  development  will  quite  cer- 
tainly be  this:  that  divorce  will  be  free,  depend- 
ing solely  on  the  will  of  both  parties  or  of  one, 
maintained  for  a  certain  time ;  that  public  opinion 
as  regards  a  dissolved  marriage  will  take  the  broader 
view  that  it  has  already  acquired  in  the  question 
of  a  broken  engagement,  which  at  one  time  was 
thought  just  as  humiliating  as  a  divorce  is  now. 

With  ever-growing  seriousness  the  nev/  concep- 
tion of  morality  is  affirmed :  that  the  race  does  not 
exist  for  the  sake  of  monogamy,  but  monogamy 
for  the  sake  of  the  race;  that  mankind  is  therefore 
19 


290  Love  and  Marriage 

master  of  monogamy,  to  preserve  or  to  abolish 
it. 

Even  the  advocates  of  free  divorce  know  well 
enough  that  it  will  involve  abuses.  But  at  the 
same  time  they  know  that  there  is  no  better  proof 
of  man's  incredible  indolence  of  mind  than  the 
uneasiness  produced  by  the  thought  of  possible 
abuses  resulting  from  a  new  social  form,  while 
the  ancient  abuses  are  tolerated  with  the  dullest 
tranquillity. 

Whatever  abuses  free  divorce  may  involve,  they 
cannot  often  be  worse  than  those  which  marriage 
has  produced  and  still  produces — marriage,  which 
is  degraded  to  the  coarsest  sexual  habits,  the  most 
shameless  traffic,  the  most  agonising  soul-murders, 
the  most  inhuman  cruelties,  and  the  grossest  in- 
fringements of  liberty  that  any  department  of 
modern  life  can  show. 

We  may  answer  that  abuses  do  not  prove  any- 
thing against  the  value  of  any  particular  social 
arrangement,  so  long  as  its  right  use  serves  well 
the  purpose  for  which  it  was  introduced. 

The  majority  thinks  that  this  is  still  the  case 
with  marriage.  The  minority,  on  the  other 
hand,  considers  that  its  constraint  now  tends  to 
defeat  its  original  object,  an  enhanced  sexual 
morality. 

This  minority  thinks  that,  as  soon  as  love  is 
admitted  as  the  moral  ground  of  marriage,  it  will 
be  a  necessary  consequence  that  he  who  has  ceased 
to  love  should  be  allowed  a  moral  as  well  as  a  legal 


Free  Divorce  291 

right  to  withdraw  from  his  marriage,  if  he  chooses 
to  avail  himself  of  this  right. 

And  this  same  minority  is  aware  that  love  may 
cease,  independently  of  a  person's  will;  that 
therefore  no  one  can  be  held  to  the  terms  of  a 
promise,  the  performance  of  which  lies  outside  his 
powers. 

Nothing  is  more  natural  than  that  love's  long- 
ing for  eternity  should  prompt  lovers  to  vows  of 
eternal  fidelity;  nothing  is  more  true  than  that  it 
is  a  Satanic  device  of  society  to  seize  upon  this 
promise  and  base  thereon  a  legal  institution 
(Carpenter) .  Nothing  is  more  necessary  than  to 
abolish  the  legal  claims  that  people  have  on  one 
another,  supported  by  promises  of  love  and  vows 
of  fidelity. 

The  more  people  understand  the  laws  of  their 
own  being,  the  more  will  the  conscientious  begin 
to  hesitate  about  making  promises  which  perhaps 
some  day  they  will  be  forced  by  inner  necessity  to 
break.  An  increasing  number  of  people  find  it 
impossible  to  contract  marriage,  or  to  ask  it  of 
the  other  party — or  to  continue  in  marriage  or 
ask  its  continuance  of  the  other — when  their  love 
has  died  or  has  awakened  for  another.  A  genera- 
tion ago,  an  engaged  person  could  refuse  his  or 
her  betrothed 's  petition  for  liberation  with  the 
answer  that  he  or  she  had  love  enough  for  both. 
In  corresponding  circles  at  the  present  day,  such 
a  speech  is  unthinkable.  But  then  a  public  engage- 
ment was  still  regarded  as  a  binding  tie  and  the 


292  Love  and  Marriage 

marriage  took  place.  After  a  long  engagement 
it  was  a  ''point  of  honour"  for  the  man  not  to  let 
a  woman  run  the  risk  of  being  unmarried,  and 
she  was  satisfied  if  he  only  paid  his  debt  of 
honour. 

Such  coarseness  of  feeling  is  fortunately  becom- 
ing more  and  more  rare,  although  it  is  far  from 
disappearing.  People  see  more  and  more  that 
they  have  no  more  right  to  marry  simply  to  fulfil  a 
duty  of  fidelity  than  they  have  to  steal  in  order 
to  fulfil  a  duty  of  maintenance;  that  there  is  no 
more  obligation  to  abide  by  a  marriage  which 
one  feels  to  be  one's  ruin  than  there  is  a  duty 
to  commit  suicide  for  the  sake  of  another. 

The  love  of  older  times  was  above  all  afraid  that 
the  other  party  should  not  feel  sufficiently  bound. 
The  finest  erotic  feeling  of  the  present  day  shudders 
at  the  idea  of  becoming  a  bond;  trembles  at  pity 
and  recoils  from  the  possibility  of  becoming  a 
hindrance.  This  state  of  the  soul  knows  of  no 
other  right  than  that  of  perfect  candour.  To 
place  legal  limits  to  each  other's  liberty,  so  that 
neither  shall  cause  pain  to  the  other,  is  under  these 
conditions  meaningless;  for  each  suffers  just  as 
much  through  a  union  maintained  without  full 
reciprocity. 

Thus  the  question  of  divorce  presents  itself  to 
modern  souls,  in  cases  where  there  are  no  children. 
And  when  there  are  children — as  is  of  course  the 
rule — they  think  that  the  mistakes  of  parents  do 
not  absolve  them  from  the  duty  of  co-operating 


Free  Divorce  293 

in  the  rearing  of  the  children  to  whom  they  have 
given  Hfe. 

But  they  maintain  that  this  need  not  always  be 
effected  by  means  of  continued  cohabitation.  On 
the  other  hand,  this  may  often  be  necessary,  and 
in  such  cases  they  subordinate  their  personal 
claims  of  happiness  to  those  of  the  race.  One 
who  holds  these  opinions  regards  him  who  gives  the 
same  answer  in  every  case — whether  this  answer 
be  "freedom  at  any  price"  or  "renunciation  at 
any  price"  — simply  as  a  moral  automaton. 


It  is  true  that  modern  men  and  women  are  less 
able  to  bear  unhappiness  in  marriage  than  were 
those  of  former  times.  This  shows  that  connubial 
idealism  makes  greater  demands  than  formerly. 

The  conscious  will  to  live,  of  our  time,  revolts 
against  the  meaningless  sufferings  through  which 
the  people  of  bygone  days,  above  all  the  women, 
allowed  themselves  to  be  degraded,  benumbed, 
and  embittered.  A  finer  knowledge  of  self,  a 
stronger  consciousness  of  personality,  now  puts  a 
limit  to  one's  own  suffering,  since  the  danger  is 
understood  of  taking  hurt  in  one's  soul.  This 
determination  of  individualism  makes  it  impossible 
for  the  modern  woman  to  be  fired  by  the  ideal 
of  Griselda — if  for  no  other  reason,  because  she 
feels  how  all-suffering  meekness  increases  injustice. 
The  "good  old "  marriages,  sustained  by  the  willing 
sacrifice  of  wives,  are  disappearing — that  is  happily 


294  Love  and  Marriage 

true!  But  no  one  takes  notice  of  the  new  good 
ones  that  are  coming  in  their  place.  If  those  who 
now  grudgingly  reckon  up  divorces  would  also 
count  all  happy  marriages,  it  would  be  seen 
that  new  formation  has  proceeded  further  than 
dissolution. 

It  must  be  evident  that  the  question  of  divorce 
is  the  pursuance  of  the  line  of  development  of 
Protestantism.  With  the  formation  of  a  right  and 
a  left  party,  as  usual  in  the  treatment  of  a  problem 
of  culture,  the  Reformation  succeeded  only  in 
asserting  the  right  of  the  senses  in  human  life. 
That  it  is  the  right  of  the  soul  in  sexual  life  that  is 
now  most  intimately  affected  by  the  question, 
people  will  not  understand.  Against  the  right 
of  the  individual  they  set  up  that  of  the  child.  If 
there  is  none,  then  a  certain  number  of  Christians 
are  willing  to  admit  that  divorce  is  sometimes 
justified.  Unhappy  parents,  on  the  other  hand, 
must  remain  together  for  the  sake  of  the  children. 

But  the  erotically  noble  person  of  the  present 
day  cannot,  without  the  deepest  sense  of  humilia- 
tion, belong  to  one  he  does  not  love,  or  by  whom 
he  knows  he  is  not  loved.  Thus  for  one  or  both 
of  the  parties  a  marriage  that  is  persisted  in  with- 
out the  love  of  one  or  both  causes  profound  suffer- 
ing either  through  this  humiliation  or  through 
lifelong  celibacy. 

This  is  the  kernel  of  the  question,  which  is 
avoided  by  all  who,  in  their  care  for  the  children, 
forget  that  the  parents  must  nes^ertheless  be  con- 


Free  Divorce  295 

sidered  as  an  end  in  themselves.  It  is  not  asked 
that  for  the  sake  of  the  children  they  should  com- 
mit other  crimes;  thus  a  woman  who  committed 
forgery  to  support  her  child  would  be  disapproved 
of.  But  other  women  are  judged  leniently  who 
*'for  the  sake  of  their  children"  feel  themselves 
prostituted  year  after  year  in  their  marriage. 

That  married  people  are  to  be  found  who  con- 
tinue to  live  as  friends,  since  the  erotic  needs  of 
both  are  small ;  that  others  do  not  feel  the  humili- 
ation of  cohabitation  without  love ;  that  the  former 
as  well  as  the  latter  are  probably  acting  best  for 
the  children  in  keeping  together  a  home  for  them — 
this  does  not  prevent  others  under  similar  circum- 
stances from  suffering  in  such  a  way  that  life  loses 
all  its  value.  And  these  are  they  who  end  either 
in  adultery  or  divorce. 

Even  if  an  enemy  of  divorce  admits  these  dif- 
ficulties, he  replies,  that  the  individual  must  still 
suffer  for  his  erotic  as  for  his  other  mistakes,  since 
only  so  can  people  be  taught  not  to  commit 
mistakes. 

But  the  true  state  of  the  case  may  be,  that  just 
as  in  old  times  murders  increased  in  proportion 
to  the  number  of  executions  people  witnessed,  so 
unhappy  marriages  may  become  more  frequent, 
the  more  there  are  at  present ;  for  it  is,  above  all, 
the  whole  spirit  that  prevails  around  us  which 
determines  our  action.  If  the  young  are  accustom- 
ed to  see  their  elders  content  with  false  and  ugly 
relations,  they  will  learn  to  be  so  likewise.     If  they 


296  Love  and  Marriage 

see  around  them  an  aspiration  towards  ideal  con- 
ditions in  love — an  idealism  which  is  revealed  now 
in  a  beautiful  married  life,  now  in  the  dissolution 
of  one  that  is  not  beautiful — then  their  ideals  will 
also  be  lofty.  Those  again,  who  have  once  made 
a  mistake,  will  perhaps  be  more  clear-sighted  if 
they  choose  again. 

But  neither  those  who  make  mistakes  nor  those 
who  witness  them  can  be  saved  by  the  misfortunes 
of  others  from  that  great  source  of  error,  erotic 
illusion.  And  until  erotic  sympathy  has  become 
more  refined,  these  mistakes  are  the  most  innocent 
of  all.  Every  lover  believes  himself  to  be  exempted 
from  the  sacrifice  of  illusion  and  no  experience  of 
the  irretrievable  erotic  mistakes  of  others  has  ever 
opened  the  eyes  of  one  blinded  by  love. 

As  it  is  recognised  that  society  ought  to  make 
the  lives  of  all  as  valuable  as  possible,  this  involves 
the  claim  that  innocent  mistakes  should  cause  as 
little  ruin  as  need  be. 

In  marriage  as  in  other  fields,  the  modem  prin- 
ciple must  be  put  in  force,  that  punishment  should 
improve  the  faulty  and  prepare  the  way  for  a 
higher  idea  of  justice.  But  this  higher  idea  is  that 
marriage  should  be  contracted  under  gradually 
improving  conditions,  not  that  it  should  continue 
under  gradually  deteriorating  influences. 

Marriage  under  constraint  forces  people  to  con- 
tinue their  cohabitation  and  to  bring  children  into 
the  world  in  a  revolt  of  the  soul  which  must  leave 
its  mark  in  their  children's  nature  and  thus  in- 


Free  Divorce  297 

fluence  their  future  destiny.  But  this  is  not  a 
'' well-deserved  punishment"  for  a  mistake:  it 
is  the  profoundest  violation  of  the  sanctity  of  the 
personality  and  of  the  race. 

Here  as  ever  the  only  logical  alternative  is  full 
individual  liberty  or  unconditional  surrender. 

The  Catholic  Church  maintains — and  rightly 
from  its  own  point  of  view — that,  since  even 
marriages  entered  into  with  the  warmest  love  and 
under  the  most  favourable  conditions  may  turn 
out  unhappily,  it  is  impossible  to  base  the  morality 
of  marriage  on  the  emotion  of  love.  Nothing  that 
is  founded  upon  emotion  can  be  permanent.  Nay, 
the  richer,  the  more  individually  and  universally 
developed  a  personality  is,  the  less  immutable  will 
be  the  state  of  its  soul.  Thus  even  the  highest 
need  an  inflexible  law,  an  irremovable  tie,  to  pre- 
vent their  being  at  the  mercy  of  winds  and  v/aves 
through  their  emotions,  while  inferior  beings  need 
them  so  as  not  to  be  driven  out  of  their  course  by 
their  desires.  The  concessions  of  Protestantism, 
therefore,  lead  to  the  dissolution  of  marriage,  since 
when  love  is  made  the  basis  of  marriage  it  is 
built  upon  sand. 

Marriage,  which  the  Church  therefore  made  a 
sacrament  and  indissoluble,  had  already  become 
the  legal  expression  of  the  husband's  right  of  pri- 
vate ownership  over  his  wife  and  children.  The 
course  of  development  has  consisted  in  an  un- 
ceasing transformation  of  this  religio-economical 
view,    and   development   cannot    stop   until    the 


298  Love  and  Marriage 

last  remnant  of  this  conception  has  been 
destroyed. 

Therefore  the  believers  in  Life  refuse  to  admit 
either  the  half -admissions  of  Protestantism  or  the 
logical  compulsion  of  Catholicism.  They  demand 
that  the  step  from  authority  to  freedom  shall  be 
taken  outright,  since  they  know  that  the  external 
authority  which  simplifies  life  does  not  create  the 
deeper  morality.  Compulsion  fetters  legal  free- 
dom of  action,  but  thereby  only  makes  secret 
crime  a  social  institution. 

And  even  if  a  husband  or  a  wife  has  outwardly 
overcome  a  temptation,  this  will  not  prevent  that 
individual  when  in  the  embrace  of  the  lawful  spouse 
from  being  filled  with  feeling  for  another.  Have 
they  then  avoided  adultery  ?  Not  according  to  their 
own  finest  consciousness — that  consciousness  which 
Goethe  aroused  in  his  great  poem  on  elective 
affinities.  Duties  performed  may  as  surely  as 
those  left  undone  produce  incalculable  and  tragic 
results.  They  are  foolish  who  think  they  can  lead 
another  soul  across  the  bridge,  fine  as  a  hair  and 
sharp  as  a  knife-edge,  by  which  every  one  goes  his 
solitary  way  over  the  abyss  to  salvation:  the  way 
of  the  choice  of  personal  conscience. 

When  custom  and  law  deprive  a  human  being  of 
full  freedom  of  choice  in  the  matters  of  most  pro- 
found personal  concern — his  belief,  his  work,  and 
his  love — then  existence  is  robbed  of  greater 
values  than  those  the  compulsory  fulfilment  of 
duty  can  bring  in. 


Free  Divorce  299 


In  love,  the  idea  of  personality  has  now  brought 
us  to  the  view  that  "property  is  theft";  that  only 
free  gifts  are  of  value ;  that  the  ideas  of  connubial 
"rights"  and  "duties"  are  to  be  exchanged  for 
the  great  reconstructive  thought,  that  fidelity  can 
never  be  promised,  but  that  indeed  it  may  be  won 
every  day. 

This  will  give  the  motive  power  for  the  attain- 
ment of  ever  higher  forms  of  erotic  organisation 
a  power  which  the  Buddha-like  calm  of  indissoluble 
marriage  has  left  unused. 

It  is  sad  that  this  truth — which  was  already 
clear  to  the  noble  minds  of  the  Courts  of  Love — 
should  still  need  proclaiming;  for  one  of  the 
reasons  given  in  these  Courts  for  love  being  impos- 
sible in  marriage  is  this :  that  woman  cannot  expect 
from  her  husband  the  delicate  conduct  that  a 
lover  must  show,  since  the  latter  only  receives 
by  favour  what  the  husband  takes  as  his  right. 

When  divorce  becomes  free,  the  attention  to 
each  other's  emotions,  the  delicacy  of  conduct  and 
the  desire  to  captivate  by  being  always  new,  which 
belong  to  the  period  of  engagement,  will  be  con- 
tinued in  married  life.  As  in  the  early  days  of 
love,  each  will  allow  the  other  full  freedom  in  all 
essential  manifestations  of  life,  but  will  exercise 
control  over  his  own  casual  moods,  whereas 
marriage  now  as  a  rule  reverses  this  happy  state 
of  things. 

The  security  of  possession  now  puts  to  sleep  the 


300  Love  and  Marriage 

eagerness  of  acquisition;  the  compulsion  to  win 
anew  will  brace  the  energy  in  this  as  in  every 
other  connection. 

A  fidelity  thus  won  will  be  the  only  sort  that 
will  be  thought  worth  having  in  the  future.  A 
craving  for  happiness  more  sensitive  than  the 
present  may  one  day  marvel  at  the  legally  insured 
fidelity  of  our  time,  as  at  its  inheritance  of  wealth. 
In  both  cases  it  will  have  been  seen  that  only  one's 
exertion  of  force  brings  happiness  and  gives  that 
felicity  of  victory  before  which  hands  stretched  out 
to  steal  shrink  back. 

The  believers  in  Life  are  everywhere  distinguished 
by  their  determination  to  give  to  every  relation  the 
value  of  the  unique,  the  stamp  of  the  exceptional, 
that  which  has  never  been  before  and  will  never 
come  again.  Lilce  the  worshippers  of  Life  of  the 
Renaissance,  those  of  our  time  have  begun  to  recov- 
er the  power  of  strong  enjoyment  and  strong  suffer- 
ing which  is  always  the  sign  of  increasing  spiritual 
unity,  a  new  gathering  of  force  through  a  new 
religious  feeling. 

To  this  view. of  life  the  permanence  of  happiness 
will  be  less  important  than  its  completeness  while 
it  lasts. 

Spinoza,  who  described  jealousy  as  no  one  else 
has  done,  has  also  uttered  this  deep  saying  of  love: 
The  greater  the  emotion  we  hope  that  the  loved  one 
will  experience  through  us,  and  the  more  the  loved 
one  is  moved  by  joy  in  his  relation  to  us,  the 
greater   also  will  be  our  own  happiness  in  love. 


Free  Divorce  301 

People  of  the  present  day  have  begun  to  dis- 
tinguish the  idea  of  this  "greatest  joy"  from  Hfe- 
long  proprietorship;  and  therewith  jealousy  in 
its  lower  form  has  begun  to  disappear. 

Jealousy  like  other  shadows  belongs  to  the 
rising  and  setting  light  and  disappears  like  them  in 
the  full  clearness  of  noonday.  But  its  tone  of 
feeling  has  become  quite  different  since  man  has 
discovered  that,  if  the  sun  stands  still  in  the  zenith 
for  him,  it  is  a  miracle — not  a  right.  The  most 
highly  developed  people  of  the  present  da^/  say 
*'l  am  loved  "or  *'I  am  not  loved"  with  the  same 
simplicity  as  they  say  the  sun  shines  or  does  not 
shine.  The  difference  is  in  both  cases  immeasur- 
able, but  in  one  case  as  in  the  other,  necessity 
removes  the  feeling  of  humiliation.  The  grief 
which  comes  when  a  lover  no  longer  feels  that  he 
brings  joy  to  the  beloved  or  when  he  sees  another 
bring  it,  is  natural  and  worthy  of  respect.  It 
ceases  to  be  so  when  it  manifests  itself  in  the  will 
of  an  avaricious  proprietor,  the  brutal  instinct 
which  often  survives  not  only  the  feeling  of  the 
other  but  also  its  own. 

But  although  the  psychological  differentiation 
in  our  time  involves  greater  possibilities  of  finding 
some  one  who  will  satisfy  some  side  of  the  erotic 
longing, — while  it  is  more  and  more  difficult  to  find 
one  who  wholly  satisfies  this  ever  more  complex 
desire, — the  danger  of  such  division  of  self  is 
counterbalanced  by  the  growing  wish  for  the 
longing   to   be  wholly   satisfied.     Love  by   thus 


302  Love  and  Marriage 

making  ever  greater  demands  becomes  at  the  same 
time  ever  more  faithful. 

Those  who  dread  the  dissolution  of  society 
through  the  insistence  upon  the  rights  of  love,  do 
not  reflect  that  its  right  to  break  up  marriage  is 
allowed  to  the  feeling,  which  has  not  only  the  red 
glow  of  passion,  but  also  the  clearness  through 
which  two  people  have  become  conscious  of  each 
other  as  a  revelation  of  the  whole  unsuspected  rich- 
ness of  life.  A  revelation  which  included  all  the 
fulness  of  comprehension,  all  the  serenity  of  con- 
fidence; where  both  have  given  with  equal 
exactingness  and  generosity — not  meagrely  or 
hesitatingly,  but  so  that  each  without  reserve  has 
rushed  to  meet  the  other — this  is  the  only  hap- 
piness that  love's  noblemen  will  now  experience. 
It  will  be  more  and  more  difficult  even  to  ex- 
perience it  once — how  much  more  so  then  to  find 
it  many  times! 

A  great  love  is  never  like  the  erotic  thunder- 
storms which  move  against  the  wind — that  is  to 
say,  against  the  whole  disposition  of  the  per- 
sonality in  other  things. 

All  valuable  feelings — whether  entertained  for 
a  person,  a  belief,  a  place,  or  a  country — are  con- 
servative. The  consciousness  of  this  gives  the 
preacher  of  liberty  his  boldness.  He  never 
perceives  how  liberty  may  be  abused,  since  he 
knows  what  it  costs  to  loosen  a  heart  from  what 
it  has  once  embraced. 

To  a  volatile  nature,  the  happiness  that  a  more 


Free  Divorce  303 

steadfast  one  experiences  in  love  is  as  unfathom- 
able as  the  bliss  of  the  mystic  becoming  absorbed 
into  the  fulness  of  his  divinity  is  to  the 
polytheist. 

Here,  as  everywhere,  to  the  believer  in  Life, 
happiness  is  one  with  morality.  Since  happiness 
consists  in  the  greatest  emotions,  its  first  condition 
is  to  intensify  and  enlarge  all  feelings,  and  above 
all  that  which  leads  to  marriage. 

But  in  addition,  the  whole  standard  of  person- 
ality depends  to  a  great  extent  upon  whether  we 
consider  fidelity  a  life- value.  He  who  desires 
fidelity  centres  his  moods  and  his  powers  upon 
what  is  essential  and  protects  them  from  the  gusts 
of  the  accidental.  Only  this  gives  style  and  great- 
ness to  existence.  The  desire  of  fidelity  is  there- 
fore one  with  a  person's  feeling  for  his  own 
integrity,  his  inward  consistency,  the  attitude 
and  dignity  of  his  spiritual  being. 

When  fidelity  is  preserved  for  these  profound 
reasons,  it  will  also  be  broken  only  for  the  same 
reasons.  A  fidelity,  on  the  other  hand,  which 
rests  upon  conventional  notions  of  duty,  will  be 
in  the  fire  like  a  fire-escape  of  straw. 

It  is  moreover  forgotten,  in  all  discussions  of  the 
dangers  of  free  divorce,  that  under  the  influence  of 
love  the  whole  disposition  of  the  soul  is  towards 
fidelity.  Great  love  absorbs  all  associations  of 
ideas  and  thus  without  conscious  exertion  intensi- 
fies and  enlarges  the  personality.  Fidelity  will 
be  a  necessary  condition  of  love,  but  a  condition 


304  Love  and  Marriage 

whose  psychological  continuance  is  not  favoured 
by  coercive  marriage. 

Fidelity  towards  one's  self — also  in  the  new  sense 
of  the  word — thus  involves  not  only  the  ability  in 
case  of  need  to  destroy  the  bridge  between  one's 
self  and  one's  past.  It  also  implies  the  building 
of  better  bridges  to  strengthen  the  connection 
between  our  personality  and  our  present.  It 
implies  not  only  the  capacity  to  have  finished  with 
a  destiny ;  but  also  that  of  not  having  done  too  soon 
with  a  person.  It  may  certainly  involve  the 
necessity  of  a  new  experiment  in  life.  But  still 
more  certainly  it  involves  the  need  of  not  allowing 
the  incidental  numbness  of  one's  feeling  to  seduce 
one  to  new  "experiences."  This  expression — in 
place  of  the  old  word  "adventures" — implies, 
moreover,  an  intensification  of  feeling:  where 
formerly  only  the  excitement  of  "adventure" 
was  looked  for,  a  richer  element  of  life  is  now 
sought.  But  it  is  often  a  fatal  error  to  suppose 
that  this  is  to  be  gained  in  new  relations,  when  on 
the  contrary  it  might  have  been  won  by  an  in- 
tensification of  the  former  ones.  By  more  atten- 
tion to  and  respect  for  the  other's  personality  one 
may  often  discover  more  than  one  had  expected; 
for  some  people  are  like  certain  landscapes  or 
works  of  art:  they  do  not  begin  to  make  an  im- 
pression until  one  thinks  one  has  done  with  them. 
But  piety  is  required  to  await  the  revelations  of 
soul  as  of  a  work.  Piety  implies  contemplation, 
and  this  demands  peace.     But  peace  is  difficult  to 


Free  Divorce  305 

find  in  our  time,  whose  misfortune  is  precisely 
disturbance  and  amusement. 

That  our  time  Hke  every  other  has  its  particular 
epidemics  in  the  erotic  sphere,  is  certain,  and 
disturbance  is  just  the  condition  in  which  the  most 
dangerous  of  these  find  a  favourable  soil.  It  is 
therefore  a  part  of  the  erotic  art  of  living  that  a 
married  couple  should  now  and  then  pass  some 
time  undisturbed  in  each  other's  company — or 
separately  and  alone — in  order  thus  to  strengthen 
the  health  of  their  feelings.  Here  as  in  other  things 
external  precautions  against  infection  are  un- 
important in  comparison  with  care  of  the  general 
health. 

Only  he  who,  after  unceasing  effort  and  patient 
self-examination,  can  say  that  he  has  used  all 
his  resources  of  goodness  and  understanding;  put 
into  his  married  life  all  his  desire  of  happiness  and 
all  his  vigilance ;  tried  every  possibility  of  enlarging 
the  other's  nature,  and  yet  has  been  unsuccessful, 
— only  he  can  with  an  easy  conscience  give  up  his 
married  life. 


The  life- tree  of  a  human  being  is  formed,  no  more 
than  are  the  trees  of  the  forest,  according  to  a 
strict  measure  for  the  length  of  the  branches  or  a 
pattern  for  the  shape  of  the  leaves.  Like  nature's 
trees,  its  beauty  depends  upon  the  freedom  of  the 
boughs  to  take  unexpected  curves,  upon  the  dis- 
position of  the  leaves  to  exhibit  an  infinite  diver- 


3o6  Love  and  Marriage 

sity  of  shape.  Only  he  who  does  not  permit  the 
tree  to  grow  according  to  its  own  inner  laws,  but 
clips  it  according  to  those  of  gardening,  can  be 
sure  of  not  preparing  surprises  for  himself  and 
others,  when  one  branch  unexpectedly  shoots  out 
and  another  equally  unaccountably  withers.  No 
one  can  answer  for  the  transformations  to  which 
life  thus  may  subject  his  own  nature;  nor  for 
the  changes  which  the  transformation  of  another's 
nature  may  effect  in  his  own  feeling.  He  may 
possess  the  rarest  disposition  to  fidelity,  the  most 
sincere  desire  to  concentrate  himself  upon  his  love, 
to  "let  his  personality  grow  around  it,  as  about 
its  core" — it  nevertheless  does  not  depend  upon 
his  will  alone  whether  this  core  shall  shrivel  or 
be  corrupted. 

Therefore  the  desire  of  fidelity  can  not,  must  not, 
and  ought  not  to  imply  more  than  the  will  to  be 
true  to  the  deepest  needs  of  one's  own  personality. 

In  other  spheres  than  that  of  love,  people  admit 
this  freely.  Nobody  considers  it  an  unquestion- 
able duty  for  a  young  man  to  find  at  once  the  view 
of  life  or  the  career  in  which  he  can  continue  for  the 
rest  of  his  life.  What  young  people  are  rightly 
warned  against  is  the  wandering  without  method 
among  different  opinions  or  undertakings;  for 
only  that  belief  or  that  work  which  one  seriously 
tries  to  live  by  and  live  for  can  really  employ  the 
powers  of  the  personality  and  thus  show  its  efficacy 
in  enhancing  them.  But  the  most  profound 
seriousness  cannot  prevent  a  continued  develop- 


Free  Divorce  307 

ment  of  the  personality  from  one  day  compelling 
the  man  to  abandon  that  belief  or  that  work.  It 
probably  would  not  occur  to  a  thoughtful  clergy- 
man to  appeal  to  such  a  man's  promises  at  con- 
firmation, or  to  a  thoughtful  father  to  bring  forward 
his  own  choice  of  a  career  as  an  example  to  his  son. 
Lifelong  tenacity  was  demanded  in  those  days 
when  it  was  assumed  that  ;i  single  doctrine,  a 
single  set  of  circumstances,  was  entirely  adequate 
for  personal  development  for  a  whole  lifetime.  The 
crime  of  deviation  was  then  logically  punished 
by  excommunication  or  by  fines.  But  the  pro- 
founder  view  which  we  have  acquired  in  the 
matters  of  belief  and  occupation  must  also  be 
extended  to  the  third.  We  ought  to  perceive  that 
unconditional  fidelity  to  one  person  may  be  just  as 
disastrous  to  the  personality  as  unconditional  con- 
tinuance in  a  faith  or  an  employment.  Those 
who  are  now  patching  the  sack-cloth  of  asceticism 
with  a  few  shreds  from  the  purple  mantle  of  per- 
sonality are  spoiling  both.  Either  state  the  claim 
of  renunciation  clearly,  like  the  Catholic,  or  admit 
the  whole  claim  of  personality.  But  the  whole 
problem  is  unfairly  stated  by  those  who  make 
"personal  love"  the  moral  basis  of  marriage,  but 
go  on  to  speak  of  this  love  as  though  it  were  a 
question  of  light-heartedly  taking  partners  for  a 
game,  where  nothing  is  more  usual  than  that  each 
woman  finds  the  right  man  and  each  man  the  right 
woman — and  so  everything  is  in  order.  If  life 
were  so  easy,  there  would  be  reason  for  the  pro- 


3o8  Love  and  Marriage 

nonncements,  which  are  now  so  profoundly  coarse, 
that  only  the  man  or  woman  without  character, 
the  aimless  personality,  is  incapable  of  vowing  a 
lifelong  love  and  keeping  the  promise;  nay,  that  a 
true  personality  can  ''command  itself  to  love  its 
child's  father  or  mother." 

He  who  asserts  that  our  true  personality  will 
always  follow  the  duty  laid  down  by  society  and 
constantly  be  able  to  fulfil  the  claims  of  fidelity, 
and  that  those  who  cannot  do  this  are  guided  by 
a  false  subjectivity  and  not  by  their  personality, 
makes  the  idea  of  personality  equivalent  to  that 
of  member  of  society,  the  whole  equivalent  to  the 
part.  The  personality,  the  unique  and  peculiar 
value,  is  certainly  connected  through  part  of  its 
nattire  with  the  standards  of  right  upheld  by 
society.     Yet  it  never  becomes  equivalent  to  them. 

The  only  thing  therefore  that  a  psychological 
thinker  can  demand  is  that  love  should  not  divide 
the  personality  in  any  phase  of  a  human  being's 
development,  but  should  always  be  its  true 
expression. 

But  only  one  who  is  ignorant  of  the  idea  of 
personality  can  believe  that  the  relation,  into  which 
a  person  at  the  age  of  twenty  puts  his  whole  feeling, 
must  necessarily  correspond  to  the  needs  of  the 
same  personality  as  it  becomes  at  thirty  or  forty. 
Only  one  so  ignorant  can  persuade  himself  that  the 
destiny  of  our  love  will  necessarily  resemble  our 
lofty  theory  of  love,  our  pure  desire  of  constancy. 
If  even  our  own  will  has  little  to  do  with  the  love 


Free  Divorce  309 

we  feel,  how  much  less  then  will  it  influence  that 
which  we  receive  or  lose! 

Thus  the  problem  of  fidelity  is  not  solved  merely 
by  imposing  the  claim  of  constancy  upon  one's 
self;  for  in  the  first  place,  in  love  there  are  two 
who  must  desire  the  same  thing,  and  in  the 
second,  each  of  these  two  is  manifold. 

No  human  being  is  sole  master  of  his  fate  when 
he  has  united  it  with  another's.  The  possibility 
of  becoming  a  complete  personality  in  and  through 
love  depends  in  half  upon  the  pure  and  whole  desire 
of  the  other  to  share  in  developing  the  common 
life. 

It  is  this  which  is  overlooked  by  the  eloquent 
preachers  of  ''constancy  as  the  expression  of  the 
personality,"  and  this  makes  their  words  about 
the  duty  of  lifelong  love  as  meaningless  as  a 
harangue  about  the  duty  of  lifelong  health. 

It  is  a  beautiful  sight  when  two  married  people 
enjoy  the  happiness  of  their  love  for  the  whole  day 
of  human  life.  It  is  also  a  beautiful  sight  when 
life  sets  like  a  clear  sun  upon  the  horizon,  and  does 
not  lose  itself  like  a  weary  river  in  the  sand. 
But  these  are  beautiful  ideals  not  commands  of 
duty. 

Love,  like  health,  can  certainly  be  neglected  or 
cared  for,  and  by  good  care  the  average  length 
of  life  both  of  human  beings  and  of  their  loves  may 
be  raised. 

But  the  final  causes  both  of  love's  birth  and  of  its 
beath  are  as  mysterious  as  those  of  the  origin  and 


310  Love  and  Marriage 


cessation  of  life.  A  person  can  therefore  no  more 
promise  to  love  or  not  to  love  than  he  can  promise 
to  live  long.  What  he  can  promise  is  to  take  good 
care  of  his  life  and  of  his  love. 


This  may  be  done,  as  already  pointed  out, 
through  the  conscious  will  to  be  faithful,  the  firm 
resolve  to  make  love  a  great  experience. 

But  perhaps  the  majority  as  yet  do  Httle  to 
preserve  their  happiness.  In  this  case,  life  works 
for  them,  as  God  "gives  to  his  servants,  while  they 
sleep." 

If  ever  the  doctrine  of  the  importance  of  the 
infinitely  small  has  its  application,  it  is  in  respect 
to  the  power  the  Httle  things  of  everyday  life  have 
of  uniting  or  dividing  in  marriage. 

That  hardships  and  memories,  joys  and  sorrow^s 
shared  bind  people  together  even  without  the 
continuance  of  love;  that  in  the  deepest  sense  of 
the  word  they  cannot  be  separated,  since  a  great 
part  of  the  one's  nature  remains  in  the  other's — 
this  in  reality  forms  the  binding  tie,  but  not  ideas 
of  duty,  whether  clear  or  obscure,  strict  or  free.  If 
in  one  case  a  married  life  has  so  dried  up  the  feelings 
of  both  that  a  gust  of  wind  drives  them  apart  like 
two  withered  leaves,  in  another  it  may  have  given 
the  feelings  such  deep  roots  that,  even  if  all  the 
leaves  that  the  spring-time  gave  are  torn  away, 
even  if  life  seems  as  empty  and  cold  as  naked 
boughs  in  winter — it  is  still  lived  in  common. 


Free  Divorce  311 

It  is  thus  a  physiological  and  psychological  fact 
that  the  man  or  woman  who  for  the  first  time  has 
communicated  to  the  other  the  joys  of  the  senses 
retains  a  power  over  her  or  him  which  is  never 
really  set  aside.  It  is  even  said  that  long  after  a 
man's  death  a  woman  sometimes  bears  children  to 
another  man  which  resemble  the  first.  As  such 
influences  are  more  decided  in  the  case  of  the  w^o- 
man,  her  fidelity  has  also  for  this  reason  become 
more  of  a  natural  necessity  than  man's — although 
the  same  influence,  if  in  a  somewhat  less  degree, 
applies  to  him. 

Even  if  no  qualms  of  conscience  for  others' 
sufferings  are  mingled  with  a  new  happiness — in 
many  other  senses  the  two,  who  in  each  other  seek 
to  forget  the  past  of  one  of  them,  will  perhaps  for 
ever  find  a  third  between  them. 

Marriage,  in  a  word,  has  such  sure  allies  in  man's 
psycho-physical  conditions  of  life  that  one  need 
not  be  afraid  of  freedom  of  divorce  becoming 
equivalent  to  polygamy.  What  this  freedom 
would  abolish  is  only  lifelong  slavery. 

It  is  evident  to  every  thoughtful  person  that  a 
real  sexual  morality  is  almost  impossible  without 
early  marriage;  for  simply  to  refer  the  young  to 
abstinence  as  the  true  solution  of  the  problem  is, 
as  we  have  already  maintained,  a  crime  against 
the  young  and  against  the  race,  a  crime  which 
makes  the  primitive  force  of  nature,  the  fire  of  life, 
into  a  destructive  element. 


312  Love  and  Marriage 

But  the  consequence  of  early  marriages  must  be 
free  divorce. 

As  soon  as  one  approaches  the  outer  side  of  the 
marriage  problem,  one  is  met  by  the  experience 
which  the  four  great  Norwegian  writers,  Ibsen, 
Björnson,  Lie,  and  Kielland,  some  years  ago 
jointly  and  publicly  announced:  that  at  present 
the  majority  do  not  marry  for  love.  And  R.  L. 
Stevenson  may  have  hit  the  mark,  when  he  calls 
the  marriages  of  the  majority  ''a  kind  of  friendship 
sanctioned  by  the  police"  and  compares  the 
"fancy"  which  decides  them  to  that  which  some- 
times takes  one  for  a  particular  fruit  in  a  dish  that 
is  being  handed  round. 

But  even  if  we  one  day  come  so  far  that  early 
love-matches  are  the  rule,  we  shall  still  be  faced, 
as  regards  them,  by  the  system  which  at  present 
obtains  among  the  upper  classes :  that  marriage  is 
binding  upon  the  lovers  before  love  is  consum- 
mated. There  is  therefore  a  truth  worthy  of 
consideration  in  the  words  of  the  brothers  Mar- 
gueritte,  in  their  contribution  to  the  question 
of  free  divorce;  that  as  the  young  girl  has  not 
experienced  what  she  binds  herself  to  at  marriage, 
the  majority  of  divorces  begin  on  the  wedding 
night. 

Free  divorce  is  therefore  an  unconditional  de- 
mand of  such  young  people  who  know  that  imf ore- 
seen  transformations  may  take  place  in  the  sphere 
of  the  soul  as  in  that  of  the  senses,  and  who  now 
frequently  seek  in  the  secret  possession  of  love  a 


Free  Divorce  313 

security  against  a  precipitancy  which  the  legal 
bond  of  marriage  may  make  irretrievable. 

The  young  know,  if  any  can  know,  that  no  form 
of  love  is  more  beautiful  than  that  in  which  two 
young  people  find  each  other  so  early  that  they 
do  not  even  know  when  their  feeling  was  born,  and 
accompany  each  other  through  all  their  fortunes, 
sometimes  even  to  death — for  now  and  then  life 
vouchsafes  this  crowning  fortune.  Never  do 
greater  possibilities  exist  for  the  happiness  both  of 
the  individuals  and  of  the  race  than  in  a  love 
which  begins  so  early  that  the  two  can  grow  to- 
gether in  a  common  development;  when  they 
possess  all  the  memories  of  youth  as  well  as  all  the 
aims  of  the  future  in  common ;  when  the  shadow  of 
a  third  has  never  fallen  across  the  path  of  either; 
when  their  children  in  turn  dream  of  the  great  love 
they  have  seen  radiating  from  their  parents. 

These  happy  ones — like  the  old  couple  in  Ber- 
nard's fine  fresco  in  the  mairie  of  the  Louvre 
arrondissement  in  Paris — will  one  day  look  up  to 
the  stars  of  the  winter  twilight,  united  in  a  more 
intimate  devotion  than  either  the  playtime  of  the 
spring  morning  or  the  midday  toil  could  afford. 

If  this  wonderful  love  were  really  the  first  and 
only  one  which  fell  to  the  lot  of  every  young  man 
and  woman,  and  were  it  always  possible  for  them 
to  realise  it  at  the  right  time — then  there  would 
neither  be  a  problem  of  morality  nor  of  divorce. 

But  the  youth  of  the  present  day  knows  that 
this  love  is  not  the  fortune  of  all.     It  has  learned  so 


314  Love  and  Marriage 

much,  from  literature,  from  life,  from  its  own  soul, 
of  the  transformations  of  love,  that  one  is  tempted 
to  wish  for  these  young  people  the  romantic  belief 
of  their  fathers  and  mothers  in  a  love  which  be- 
came extinct  as  easily  as  now.  The  difference  is 
merely  this,  that  whereas  formerly  they  were 
content  with  a  faded  glow,  we  will  have  continual 
fire. 

It  is  known  now  that,  although  youthful  love 
may  be  the  surest  basis  of  marriage,  it  is  more 
often  the  reverse.  Here,  if  anywhere,  is  the  scene 
of  accidents.  The  one  we  have  grown  up  with,  the 
girl  or  youth  we  are  thrown  with  just  when  the 
erotic  life  is  waking ;  the  one  we  were  teased  about ; 
the  one  we  hear  is  "in  love"  with  us;  the  one  we 
meet  when  the  happiness  of  others  fills  the  air  with 
longing — these  and  other  accidents,  but  not  per- 
sonal choice,  often  decide  youthful  love. 

Then  the  imagination  sets  to  work  to  transform 
the  reality  in  accordance  with  the  ideal  we  have 
formed  for  ourselves — and  even  this  is  often  the 
result  of  accidental  influence.  It  is  therefore  not 
surprising  that  most  people,  when  after  ten  years 
or  so  they  meet  again  the  object  of  their  first  love, 
give  a  sigh  of  gratitude  to  the  fate  which  made 
that  love  "unhappy." 

When  it  has  not  been  so  in  the  usual  sense  of  the 
word,  one  of  the  parties  may  often  be  most  to  be 
pitied,  and  it  is  just  those  young  people  who 
unhesitatingly  realise  their  love  in  the  belief  of 
its  lifelong  continuance,  that  in  coercive  marriage 


Free  Divorce  315 

are  made  the  victims  of  their  own  pure  will,  their 
healthy  courage,  their  bright  idealism. 

For  the  younger,  in  the  richest  sense  of  the  word, 
a  person  is,  the  more  certainly  does  he  possess  the 
poet's  gift  which  transforms  reality  according  to  his 
dreams.  The  fine  curve  of  a  pair  of  lips  renews 
the  marvel  of  the  legend:  that  every  frog  that 
jumps  over  them  is  changed  into  a  rose.  Even  if  a 
dim  suspicion  awakes,  when  every  serious  thought  or 
intimate  feeling  is  met  by  empty  silence  or  equally 
empty  loquacity,  the  imagination  easily  convinces 
the  instinct  that  silence  means  "profundity  of 
intelligence, "  or  speech  **  candour."  At  every  age, 
but  especially  at  this,  love  is  a  great  superstition. 
Secure  as  sleep-walkers  in  the  presence  of  danger, 
its  votaries  fling  themselves  into  a  decision.  And 
it  is  this  simple  rashness  of  innocence  that  the 
current  conception  of  morality  subjects  to  a  life- 
long punishment.  The  cautious  ones,  on  the 
other  hand,  often  find  in  time  the  great  rewards 
— thanks  to  their  own  smaller  value. 

More  things  happen  in  a  human  life  than 
marriage  and  finally  death.  Much  may  happen 
in  a  human  soul  between  marriage  and  death. 
The  current  assumption  that  everything  which 
separates  a  person  from  the  partner  in  matrimony 
is  evil  and  ought  to  be  overcome ;  everything  which 
binds  him  to  her  good  and  ought  to  be  encouraged 
— this  is  part  of  the  wisdom  which  reduces  life  to  the 
simplest  terms,  which  is  cheap  and  therefore  most 
in  use ;  for  a  higher  wisdom  demands  a  higher  price. 


3i6  Love  and  Marriage 

Nothing  is  commoner,  especially  for  the  woman 
whose  first  experience  of  love  is  in  marriage,  than 
that  she  is  in  love  with  love  and  not  her  husband. 
Sometimes  woman  is  betrayed  by  her  senses,  but 
more  often  by  the  morning  dew  of  sensibility, 
which  youth  and  love  spread  over  even  the  driest 
of  men's  souls, — a  dew  which  disappears  with  the 
morning.  Another  illusion,  which  in  these  days  of 
intercommunication  causes  many  mistakes  in  love, 
is  the  peculiarity  of  a  foreign  nationality,  which 
has  the  effect  of  a  personal  originality — until  it 
gradually  betrays  itself  as  only  another  kind  of 
conformity  than  that  one  is  used  to. 

In  other  cases  again,  the  husband  is  all  she  sees 
in  him.  But  a  young  woman  herself  often  goes 
through,  during  the  years  from  twenty  to  twenty- 
five,  so  complete  a  transformation  of  feelings  and 
ways  of  thought,  that  after  a  few  years  of  mar- 
riage she  finds  herself  in  the  presence  of  a  man 
who  is  a  perfect  stranger  to  her. 

This  period  of  illusions  in  first  youth  is  answered 
by  another  towards  the  close  of  youth.  If  a 
woman  has  not  before  experienced  love,  this  is  the 
psychological  moment  at  which  almost  every  illu- 
sion is  possible.  Her  now  universal  demands  of 
love,  the  longing  of  her  mature  woman's  nature, 
have  countless  times  made  a  noble  creature  cast 
these  pearls — if  not  exactly  as  described  in  the 
biblical  image — at  least  into  an  empty  space  where 
they  have  just  as  surely  been  unappreciated. 

On  man's  side,  there  are  other  or  corresponding 


Free  Divorce  317 

possibilities  that  early  marriage  may  be  founded 
on  self-deception. 

But  even  when  love  is  real  and  well-founded, 
there  yet  arise,  from  the  charm  of  contradictions 
already  referred  to,  innumerable  occasions  of  in- 
curable discord. 

Thus  there  are  natures  so  simple  that  they  be- 
come crippled,  so  uncomplex  that  they  are  foolish, 
so  homogeneous  as  to  be  heavy.  These  are  they 
who  usually  love  once  for  all,  with  complete  de- 
votion. But,  especially  when  they  are  women, 
Goethe's  words  are  often  true  of  them:  that  a 
woman's  greatest  misfortune  is  not  to  be  charming 
when  she  loves.  Only  complete  security  gives 
these  natures  the  calm  of  equilibrium,  the  courage 
of  self-confidence,  which  calls  forth  the  ''smile  of 
inward  happiness"  whereby  they  also  become 
attractive.  But  these  natures,  who  of  all  most 
deserve  happiness,  usually  meet  with  some  person 
of  constantly  changing  moods,  who  reacts  with 
extreme  sensitiveness  to  every  impression,  but 
can  never  love  deeply,  and  therefore  is  soon  un- 
able to  bear  that  simplicity  and  seriousness  in 
life  and  death  which  at  first  charmed  by  their 
contrast. 

Such  people  are  often  poets  or  artists,  who  in 
love  seek  only  constant  stimulation.  To  them 
loving  means  "waking  in  the  morning  with  new 
words  on  one's  lips,"  and  their  erotic  fortunes 
therefore  show  a  rapidity  of  revolution  comparable 
with  that  of  the  moons  around  Mars.    Just  as  for 


3i8  Love  and  Marriage 

certain  natures,  a  connection  originally  frivolous 
may  become  permanent,  held  together  by  depth  of 
feeling,  so  for  this  class  of  natures — on  account 
of  the  superficiality  of  their  feelings — no  kind  of 
connection  is  serious. 

It  is  not  unfrequently  those  who  give  the  finest 
descriptions  of  their  soulful  moods  and  their  ex- 
quisite feelings,  who  in  their  acts  of  love  are 
narrowly  selfish  or  relentlessly  harsh.  For  it  is 
the  impressions  of  culture  stored  in  their  intelli- 
gence which  determine  their  conscious  utterances, 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  their  subconscious  ego 
that  decides  their  actions.  And  this  ego  is  often 
centuries  behind  their  cultured  consciousness.  He, 
on  the  other  hand,  who  is  reticent  and  curt  of 
speech  or  dull  and  awkward  in  manners  may  at 
bottom  possess  a  delicacy  which  he  can  show  only 
in  actions,  the  others  only  in  words.  But  unfor- 
tunately in  our  time  opportunities  for  speech  are 
many  and  for  action  few — and  so  women  pass  over 
the  latter  for  the  former.  How  many  a  woman 
has  not  afterwards — before  some  act  of  the  man 
of  words — asked  herself  how  it  was  possible  for  her 
ever  to  love  that  man!  How  many  a  one,  before 
the  actions  of  the  silent,  has  not  sighed,  What  a 
pity  that  I  was  never  able  to  love  him ! 

But  in  one  case  as  in  the  other,  through  the  law 
of  contrasts,  she  was  united  to  him  and  feels  in 
this  union  the  death  or  paralysis  of  the  best  possi- 
bilities of  her  being. 

The  most  misleading  of  illusions  are.  however, 


Free  Divorce  319 

those  which  are  fostered  by  the  actions  love 
produces;  for  it  is  not  these  which  determine  the 
quahty  of  a  personahty.  While  love  is  fighting  for 
its  happiness  it  may  transform  an  ordinary  person 
into  something  higher  than  himself,  as  also  into 
something  lower.  When  the  tension  is  relieved, 
it  is  seen  that  in  the  former  case — especially  as 
regards  men — love  was  able  to 

.  .  .  unmake  him  from  a  common  man 

But  not  complete  him  to  an  uncommon  one.  .  .  . 

It  was  no  organic  growth  of  the  personality, 
but  only  a  straining  of  self  that  love  called  forth. 

But  she  who  loved  him  will  watch  till  her  eyes 
are  weary  for  what  she  has  seen  but  once! 

Those  who  have  loved  them  deeply  learn  from 
these,  in  one  way  or  another,  inadequate  persons 
the  most  dearly-bought  truth  in  the  knowledge  of 
human  nature,  a  truth  that  the  heart  acknowledges 
last  of  all:  that  even  if  we  poured  out  our  own 
blood  in  streams  for  any  one — ^we  could  not  there- 
by give  him  a  drop  of  richer  or  more  noble  blood 
than  is  found  in  his  own  heart. 

Many  have  learned  this  secret  in  that  kind  of 
marriage,  where  secure  friendship  and  faithful  com- 
radeship abounded;  just  those  feelings,  in  fact, 
which  are  recommended  as  the  infallible  remedy 
for  love's  mistakes. 

How  often  has  not  one  of  these  married 
people  active  for  and  with  the  other,  found  out 


320  Love  and  Marriage 

that  they  never  bring  their  mate  into  spiritual 
activity,  that  the  soul  of  one  has  never  reached  the  ■ 
soul  of  the  other?  Outside  observers  think  them 
suited  like  "hand  in  glove."  The  image  is  sig- 
nificant, for  a  glove  is  empty  and  meaningless  when 
it  does  not  enclose  a  hand.  But  like  hand  to 
hand  they  are  not  suited!  Therefore  it  not  un- 
frequently  occurs  that  some  day  one  of  them  is 
seized  by  a  passionate  longing  to  meet  with  another 
hand,  which  shall  be  strongly  and  quietly  grasped 
in  his  own  and  thus  double  its  power;  that  the 
voice,  which  has  continually  spoken  into  empty 
space — whence  a  faithful  echo  has  unfailingly 
answered — will  finally  be  dumb  from  the  longing 
to  receive  an  answer  from  another  voice,  in  words 
that  were  never  heard  before. 

Not  a  few  marriages  include  men  who  have  had 
such  fine  thoughts,  dreamed  such  fair  dreams  of 
woman,  that  they  have  desired  to  win  her  senses 
only  through  her  soul  and  have  disdained  to  offer 
her  other  than  their  best,  the  richest  treasures  of 
their  personality.  But  perhaps  such  a  man  has 
a  wife  who  understands  only  money-making  and 
desires  only  the  pleasures  of  love.  If  he  offers  all 
the  glories  of  his  soul,  she  does  not  even  suspect 
when  a  mood  is  at  its  height;  for  her  silence  is 
never  eloquent;  she  is  incapable  of  waiting  for 
another's  thought;  has  no  patience  with  what  is 
difficult  of  comprehension,  and  will  always  receive 
the  unusual  with  dull  misunderstanding  or  gay 
superiority. 


I 


Free  Divorce  321 

The  gulf  perhaps  began  to  open  between  them 
when  one  became  aware  of  the  other's  absence  at  a 
moment  when  he  himself  was  most  present;  or 
when  one  felt  that  their  bodies  stood  between  their 
souls,  the  other  that  their  souls  stood  between  their 
bodies;  or  when  one  felt  a  restriction  of  liberty 
from  the  other's  superior  spiritual  or  sensual  force; 
or  when  one  found  that  he  could  never  show  his 
innermost  being  without  its  putting  the  other  out 
of  humour.  Thus  two  persons,  each  one  innocent, 
may  make  each  other  profoundly  solitary  while 
sharing  the  same  bed  and  board.  Neither  re- 
ceives from  the  other  what  his  innermost  nature 
needs — and  what  one  gives  is  only  a  constraint 
upon  the  other's  nature.  Not  a  note  in  the  soul 
of  one  is  tuned  to  the  same  pitch  as  the  other's ;  not 
a  movement  in  the  blood  of  one  is  capable  of 
enrapturing  the  other's.  Now  it  is  unbearable 
dissimilarities,  now  unbearable  similarities,  that 
cause  the  trouble;  each  finds  in  the  other  "all  the 
virtues  he  detests  but  none  of  the  faults  he  loves." 
With  all  this,  perfect  outward  peace  may  prevail; 
nay,  respect  and  devotion  in  a  certain  sense.  That 
this  is  the  fortune  of  innumerable  marriages  is 
overlooked  in  general,  since  married  life  usually 
continues — unless  a  third  appears. 

In  the  ideas  of  the  Church,  the  incapacity  for 
marriage  of  one  party  freed  the  other  from  the 
duty  of  fidelity.  In  the  more  spiritual  view  of  the 
future  it  will  be  equally  evident  that  the  same 
right   exists   to   dissolve   a  marriage   which   has 


322  Love  and  Marriage 

remained  unconsummated  in  a  spiritual  sense; 
and  there  may  be  just  as  many  possibilities  of  in- 
capacity to  fulfil  the  spiritual  claims  of  marriage 
as  there  are  men  and  women;  therefore  also  just 
as  many  causes  of  divorce. 


In  the  preceding  pages  only  certain  typical  cases 
of  unhappiness  have  been  referred  to.  The  many 
tragic  exceptions  are  here  left  altogether  on  one 
side.  So  also  are  those  causes  of  divorce  which  the 
preachers  of  monogamy  call  the  "real  misfortunes" : 
drunkenness,  bodily  cruelty,  and  the  like;  for 
with  the  customary  realism  of  ''idealism,"  they 
admit  these  as  valid  reasons  for  divorce.  It  is 
significant  that  among  the  lower  classes  people  still 
often  think  themselves  bound  to  bear  these  mis- 
fortunes as  a  part  of  the  miscalculations  of  marriage 
as  unavoidable  as  those  more  complex  sufferings 
which  the  champions  of  monogamy  exhort  people 
on  a  higher  plane  to  endure.  The  pangs  a  soul 
suffers  may,  they  think,  be  borne  with  God's  help, 
whereas  unfortunately  God  is  not  in  the  habit  of 
interfering  when  a  man  beats  his  wife ;  and  the 
longer  a  soul  has  suffered,  the  more  certain  are  they 
that  it  can  continue  to  suffer. 

Nor  do  they  perceive  that  a  relationship  may 
have  seemed  good  —  perhaps  even  have  been 
good, — until,  after  a  lapse  of  years,  a  moment  has 
arrived  which  has  stripped  the  soul  of  one  of  them 
naked,  sometimes  in  all  its  loftiness,  more  often  in 


Free  Divorce  323 

all  its  baseness.  If  the  latter,  then  what  was  pos- 
sible before  becomes  from  that  hour  unthinkable. 
That  the  soul  may  be  confronted  by  such  an 
alternative,  of  life  or  death,  they  will  not  admit. 
The  soul,  they  say,  is  "a  spirit, "  an  "invisible  and 
imperishable  entity."  That  its  conditions  of  life 
are  just  as  variable  and  complex  as  those  of  the 
organism  is,  to  a  certain  sort  of  ''idealism,"  mean- 
ingless. With  God's  help,  they  say,  everyone  may 
save  his  soul.  But  such  help  is  in  this  kind  of 
peril  as  imcertain  as  it  is  in  peril  of  the  sea — and 
even  in  the  latter  case  it  is  not  "the  votive  tablets 
of  the  drowned,  but  only  those  of  the  saved,  that 
one  sees  in  the  temple"  (Nietzsche). 


^  It  is,  however,  especially  when  a  man  or  woman 
is  divorced  in  order  to  contract  a  fresh  marriage 
that  an  outcry  is  raised  over  the  weakness  of  the  age 
in  bearing  suffering.  Indeed,  it  is  not  even  ac- 
knowledged that  marriage  may  involve  any  suffer- 
ing. Even  those  who  have  hitherto  found  a 
married  couple  extremely  ill-suited,  forget  at  once 
that  they  did  so — should  either  of  them  "allow  a 
third  person  to  come  between  them." 

They  forget  not  only  their  own  former  judg- 
ment but  also  the  fact  taught  by  experience,  that 
when  two  married  people  are  wholly  one,  there 
is  no  room  for  a  third  between  the  bark  and 
the  tree.  In  the  contrary  case,  a  third  comes  be- 
tween them  sooner  or  later.     Sometimes  it  is  the 


324  Love  and  Marriage 

child,  sometimes  a  life's  work,  sometimes  a  new 
feeling — but  something  always  comes,  thanks  to 
nature's  ''abhorrence  of  a  vacuum,"  which  is 
never  more  fatal  than  in  marriage.  Within  the 
dimensions  of  the  soul,  as  within  those  of  space,  no 
one  can  take  the  place  of  another,  but  can  occupy- 
only  that  space  which  another  has  left  empty 
or  not  been  able  to  retain. 

In  the  latter  case  it  is  fair  to  admit  the  indirect 
share  of  literature  in  the  inconsiderateness  of  those 
without  an  erotic  conscience.  The  idea  of  justice 
in  love  has  had  to  be  extended.  But  during  this 
removal  of  the  boundaries,  which  literature  is 
carrying  out,  a  general  insecurity  has  set  in. 

Poetry  performs  with  the  fullest  freedom  its 
duty  of  investigating  the  secrets  of  love,  according 
to  which  souls  and  senses  are  attracted  and  repelled 
in  answer  to  that  law  of  elective  affinity  which  our 
time  is  seeking  more  and  more  eagerly  to  discover, 
in  order  to  be  able  to  direct  the  erotic  forces  to  a 
higher  development.  Literature  is  the  foremost 
of  these  discoverers;  and  this  in  itself  is  enough 
to  justify  that  complete  freedom,  without  which, 
moreover,  it  cannot  become  what  Georg  Brändes 
has  called  love-poetry:  the  finest  instrument  for 
gauging  the  strength  and  warmth  of  the  emotional 
life  of  a  period. 

That  literature  is  often  the  power  which  gives 
rise  to  erotic  agitation,  is  self-evident.  And  thus 
it  always  co-operates  in  some  measure  in  the  mis- 
fortunes which  are  caused  by  loves  of  the  imagi- 


Free  Divorce  325 

nation  or  the  intellect,  misfortunes  which  are 
avoided  by  the  firm  and  mature  personality.  The 
weak,  on  the  other  hand,  are  those  who  in  their 
loves  as  in  their  beliefs  adopt  the  course  that 
another's  influence  gives  them. 

Like  lawn-tennis — which  in  certain  circles  makes 
or  mars  marriages — love  is  favoured  by  summer 
air  and  idleness.  But  at  all  seasons  there  are  men 
and  women  for  whom  everyone  is  a  ball  that  sets 
their  fancy  or  their  vanity  in  motion.  No  form 
of  self-assertion  is  more  justified  than  that  of 
opposing  one's  vigilance,  one's  will,  and  one's 
dignity  to  this  use  of  one's  personality.  What 
stimulates  the  game  is  not  the  power  of  the  senses 
alone.  No,  this  game  is  the  sole  inventive  faculty 
of  spiritual  poverty,  the  mark  of  erotic  ill-breeding. 
Only  a  refined  person  can  rejoice  at  the  stimulants 
to  life  in  every  fi.eld,  the  means  of  which  he  does 
not  himself  possess.  As  yet  few  people  have 
attained  a  culture  like  that  of  the  Athenian  beggar, 
who  thanked  Alcibiades  for  giving  him  the  jewels 
that  Alcibiades  indeed  wore — but  that  the  beggar 
was  free  to  rejoice  at.  To  attain  in  regard  to 
human  beings  this  sense  of  joy,  free  from  all 
covetousness,  is  the  flower  of  flne  breeding. 

But  the  nervosity  of  the  present  day  stimulates, 
on  the  contrary,  erotic  kleptomania.  People  steal 
one  another,  now  from  the  same  kind  of  hysteria 
which  makes  thieves  of  Parisian  ladies  in  the 
fashionable  stores;  now  from  the  same  crudity 
which  makes  the  child  pluck  every  flower  he  sees ; 


326  Love  and  Marriage 

now  from  the  same  desire  which  urges  the  collector 
constantly  to  acquire  new  specimens. 

When  in  regard  to  human  beings  the  pleasure  of 
the  connoisseur  rather  than  that  of  the  collector 
has  been  attained,  then  the  greatest  of  all  joys — 
that  of  human  beings  in  one  another — will  not  be 
so  often  disturbed  by  erotic  complications.  To 
appeal  to  the  liberty  of  the  personality  in  frivolous 
concessions  to  eroticism  is  the  same  gross  abuse  of 
the  idea  as  to  use  the  name  of  this  liberty  in  sailing 
a  leaky  yacht  in  a  storm. 

The  liberty  of  the  personality  involves  great 
risks  to  win  great  rewards;  but  it  does  not  in- 
volve allowing  one's  self  to  be  driven  into  dangers, 
where  for  a  trifle  one  stakes  one's  own  life  and  that 
of  others.  To  drift  into  relations  where  one  has 
not  the  hundredth  part  of  the  consent  of  one's 
innermost  ego,  is  not  proving  but  wasting  one's 
personality;  for  every  action  which  is  less  than 
ourselves,  degrades  our  personality. 

Again,  it  may  be  disastrous  to  perform  acts 
greater  and  stronger  than  ourselves.  He  who 
ventures  upon  an  exceptional  course  must — like 
the  alpine  climber — possess  an  abundance  of 
strength  and  the  sense  of  security  which  it  lends ; 
for  otherwise,  in  both  cases,  the  enterprise  will 
be  successful  only  if  everything  occurs  according 
to  the  most  favourable  calculation.  In  an  un- 
foreseen misadventure  the  inadequate  ones  are 
those  who  are  lost.  Therefore,  in  one  case  as 
in  the  other,  public  opinion  is  unwittingly  right 


Free  Divorce  327 

when  it  glorifies  the  daring  that  succeeds,  but 
condemns  that  which  fails. 

Most  people  are  not  equal  to  the  consequences  of 
their  resolutions.  On  the  contrary,  like  unseated 
riders  they  are  dragged  by  their  actions  through 
degraded  circumstances  that  they  had  not  counted 
upon.  Thus  many  a  pair  of  lovers  who  have 
broken  earlier  ties,  have  been  only  a  warning 
example — since  their  action  was  destructive,  not 
enhancing  to  life. 

Ruin  may  be  the  climax  of  life;  but  inefficiency 
is  always  defeat;  and  of  all  the  rashness  of  this 
life,  the  rash  project  of  an  exceptional  lot  is  the 
saddest. 

Few  people  who  have  passed  their  youth  have 
courage  or  strength  for  such  new  experiences  as 
imply  a  real  enhancement  of  life.  The  majority 
ought  rather  to  employ  their  personality  in  the 
task  of  worthily  bearing  and  making  the  best  of 
their  lot — and,  in  spite  of  all  that  is  asserted  to 
the  contrary,  that  is  also  what  most  people  do 
and  will  continue  to  do. 

Those  who  trust  only  in  compulsion  to  restrain  a 
man's  desire  to  desert  his  wife,  forget  to  what  a 
degree  spiritual  influences  have  even  now  facili- 
tated divorce,  in  spite  of  the  coercive  law.  One 
seldom  finds  in  our  day  a  high-minded  husband 
or  wife  who  insists  on  retaining  the  other  against 
his  or  her  will,  except  when  it  is  clear  to  one  partner 
that  divorce,  if  conceded,  would  result  in  the  cer- 
tain ruin  of  the  other.    As  a  rule  it  is  now  only  the 


328  Love  and  Marriage 

narrow-minded  or  the  low-minded  who  exercise 
the  right  of  refusing  divorce.  If  this  right  were 
abohshed,  this  would  not  entail  the  abolition  of  the 
influences  which  even  now  keep  married  people 
together — although  in  most  cases  they  might  be 
free  if  they  wished  it. 

Those  who  thoughtlessly  separated,  when 
greater  facilities  are  given,  would  be  the  same 
class  of  people  who  now,  in  coercive  marriage, 
secretly  deceive  one  another. 

To  the  serious,  divorce  will  always  be  serious. 
Before  a  person  of  feeling  and  thought  consciously 
hurts  another  who  has  loved  or  loves  him,  he 
himself  has  suffered  terrible  pain.  Gratitude  for 
a  great  devotion  in  a  free  connection  has  often 
proved  more  powerfully  binding  than  the  law  could 
have  been.  Nay,  to  anyone  tender  of  conscience 
the  ties  formed  by  a  free  connection  are  stronger 
than  the  legal  ones,  since  in  the  former  case  he  has 
made  a  choice  more  decisive  to  his  own  and  the 
other's  personality  than  if  he  had  followed  law  and 
custom. 

And  even  when  no  feelings  of  affection  exercise 
their  retentive  power,  many  people  prefer  to  re- 
main as  wreckage  on  the  same  shore,  rather  than 
be  washed  away  towards  a  new  and  uncertain  fate. 
Human  nature  is  credited  with  far  too  great 
simplicity  and  elasticity  when  it  is  taken  for 
granted  that  one  experiment  in  life  would  succeed 
another  if  divorce  were  free.  In  this  case  it  is 
life  itself,   not  the  law,   which  fixes    the  insur- 


Free  Divorce  329 

mount  able  limits.  To  the  deeper  natures  which 
have  broken  away  from  a  life-connection,  the  pain 
of  it  has  often  been  so  great  as  permanently  to 
deaden  the  colours  of  life. 


In  connection  with  the  modem  demand  for 
exemption  from  motherhood  we  have  already 
rejected  the  expedient  of  securing  love's  freedom 
through  the  rearing  of  children  by  the  State.  At 
the  same  time  the  importance  and  value  of  the 
parental  home  was  insisted  upon  as  strongly  as 
possible. 

Here,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  place  to  point 
out  the  one-sidedness  of  the  notion  that  nothing 
is  more  important  than  that  the  parents  should 
remain  together  for  the  sake  of  the  children — 
since  everything  must  finally  depend  upon  how 
the  parents  remain  together  and  what  they 
become  through  remaining  together. 

The  more  degrading  cohabitation  is  to  the  per- 
sonality of  each  parent  the  less  valuable  will  be 
the  influence  for  the  children  of  the  parental 
relation. 

Only  one  who  sees  in  marriage  a  system  directly 
ordained  by  God,  a  form  of  realisation  of  the 
divine  reason,  can  maintain  the  proposition  that 
in  such  a  system  the  good  must  outweigh  human 
defects.  Those  who  hold  that  the  maintenance 
of  marriage  is  always  the  sound  and  moral  course, 
must  take  upon  themselves  the  burden  of  proving 


330  Love  and  Marriage 

that  the  dull  connubial  habits  of  divided  mates 
are  a  pure  source  for  the  origin  of  new  beings; 
that  their  mutually  conflicting  influences  are 
better  able  to  further  the  welfare  of  the  children 
than  a  tranquil  bringing-up  by  one  of  them; 
that  the  happiness  of  one  of  them  in  a  new  union 
is  more  dangerous  to  the  children  than  his  im- 
happiness  in  the  former  one. 

To  those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  hold  the  faith 
of  Life,  the  question  of  the  children  is  always  a 
fresh  one  in  every  fresh  divorce.  Here  again 
we  must  rise  to  the  conditional  judgment,  and 
leave  behind  the  chess-board  morality  with  its 
equal  squares  of  right  and  wrong.  The  danger 
to  the  children  arising  from  a  divorce  depends  on 
all  that  has  gone  before  and  all  that  comes  after. 
He  who  dissolves  his  marriage  in  the  face  of  his 
inner  consciousness  of  the  harm  that  the  children 
will  thereby  suffer,  commits  a  sin  which  will 
infallibly  be  succeeded  by  the  remorse  that 
friends  are  sometimes  eager  to  adduce  as 
extenuating  circumstances.  He,  on  the  other 
hand,  who  "sins"  with  an  easy  conscience,  has 
made  his  choice  with  the  welfare  of  the  children 
in  one  scale  of  the  balance.  This  calm  of  con- 
science is  then  not  indifference,  and,  therefore, 
does  not  prevent  the  possibility  of  his  suffering 
deeply  through  the  consequences  of  the  decision 
which  he  nevertheless  does  not  regret.  It  may 
be  that  in  most  cases  where  there  are  children, 
the  less  painful  course,  even  for  him  who  is  most 


Free  Divorce  331 

convinced  of  his  personal  right,  is  to  endeavour 
to  the  utmost  to  preserve  a  common  life  which 
allows  the  children  to  grow  up  under  the  joint 
protection  of  a  father  and  mother,  and  for  the 
sake  of  the  children  to  give  this  life  a  worthy  and 
kindly  character. 

In  former  times,  people  mended  and  patched 
things  up  endlessly.  The  psychologically  devel- 
oped generation  of  the  present  day  is  more 
disposed  to  allow  what  is  broken  to  remain 
broken.  For,  except  in  the  cases  where  the  cause 
of  rupture  has  been  outward  misunderstanding  or 
belated  development,  patched-up  marriages — like 
patched-up  engagements — seldom  prove  lasting. 
It  has  often  been  profound  instincts  that  caused 
the  rupture;  the  reconciliation  violated  these 
instincts  and  sooner  or  later  such  violation 
revenges  itself. 

Thus,  it  happens,  that  even  exceptional  natures 
have  a  greater  burden  than  they  can  bear,  and 
then  it  is  not  the  living  together  but  the  dying 
together  of  their  parents  that  the  children  witness. 

Neither  religion  nor  the  law,  neither  society 
nor  the  family,  can  decide  what  a  marriage  kills 
in  a  human  being  or  what  it  may  be  the  means  of 
saving  in  him.  Only  he  himself  knows  the  one 
and  feels  the  other.  Only  he  himself  can  determine 
how  far  it  may  be  possible  for  him  to  have  so  far 
finished  with  his  own  existence  that  he  can  com- 
pletely pass  into  that  of  his  children ;  to  bear  the 
pain  of  a  continued  married  life  so  that  it  may 


332  Love  and  Marriage 

enhance  the  powers  of  himself  and  the  children. 
A  mother  can  do  this  oftener  than  a  father,  but 
in  no  case  is  there  any  standard  that  others  can 
use  to  determine  when  an  excess  of  suffering  is 
present.  More  than  this,  there  is  strictly  no 
suffering,  but  only  suffering  beings  who  in  every 
case  create  the  suffering  anew  according  to  their 
type  of  soul. 

Only  one  thing  is  certain:  that  no  one  is  more 
outside  the  question  than  the  very  one  who 
causes  the  suffering.  Thus  nothing  can  be  more 
unreasonable  than  to  leave  to  the  judgment  of  one 
of  the  parties  the  decision  we  have  just  mentioned. 
The  knowledge  of  being  able  to  refuse  a  divorce 
now  involves  want  of  consideration  for  the  other's 
moods  of  dejection,  which  would  never  occur  if 
consideration  werenecessar>^  to  prevent  separation. 
Such  attentions  are  especially  significant  at  the 
beginning  of  married  life,  when  most  young  mar- 
ried people  solve  the  small  and  great  problems 
of  accommodation  with  more  or  less  difficulty. 
The  birth  of  the  first  child,  moreover,  is  often 
accompanied  by  abnormal  states  of  feeling,  which 
lead  to  hasty  conclusions  as  to  incompatibility 
and  antipathy.  The  opponents  of  free  divorce 
think  that  it  is  just  during  these  3^ears  that  pre- 
cipitate divorces  might  take  place.  But  they 
do  not  reflect  that  either  partner  in  his  sense  of 
proprietorship  now  gives  himself  a  loose  rein  in  a 
way  that  would  be  unthinkable  if  such  security 
did  not  exist.     Thus  the  young  certainly  keep 


Free  Divorce  333 

together,  but  not  unfrequently  destroy  their 
finest  chances  of  happiness.  The  need  of  mutual 
caution  during  these  dissensions  should  have  a 
much  deeper  influence  in  keeping  a  couple  together 
than  has  at  present  the  knowledge  that  they  can- 
not be  free.  After  the  advent  of  children,  the 
danger  is  small — except  in  the  case  of  heartless 
natures — that  a  sufferer  will  too  hastily  think  his 
powers  of  endurance  are  exhausted.  The  inter- 
dependence which  children  create  between  their 
parents  when  these  together  care  for  and  love 
them,  is  sometimes  indissoluble.  In  most  cases 
it  is  so  strong  as  to  form  the  real  tie,  without 
which  laws  twice  as  strict  as  the  present  ones 
would  have  no  power  to  keep  together  two  un- 
willing beings. 

When  speaking  of  love's  selection,  we  pointed 
to  the  signs  which  indicate  that  the  feeling  for 
the  race — the  feeling  which  from  time  immemorial 
has  linked  together  man  and  woman  at  a  common 
hearth,  has  raised  the  altar  near  it  and  round 
them  both  the  town  wall — ^is  approaching  its 
renaissance.  Consciousness  of  the  children's 
rights  is  indubitably  on  the  increase,  together 
with  a  knowledge  of  the  rights  of  love.  And 
against  the  assaults  of  this  most  turbulent  and 
dangerous  sea  the  race-feeling  will  continue  to 
stand  as  a  wall  protecting  society,  though  in  a 
new  form  to  give  it  new  powers  of  resistance. 

But  the  opponents  of  divorce  think,  on  the 
contrary,  that  the  sense  of  happiness  through  the 


334  Love  and  Marriage 

children — especially  in  the  case  of  the  father — 
has  now  become  so  weak  that  most  fathers  would 
free  themselves  from  all  responsibility  if  they 
only  could. 

If  this  be  so,  society  itself  is  to  blame.  It  not 
only  countenances  sexual  relations  entirely  inde- 
pendent of  the  mission  of  the  race;  it  frees  the 
man  from  responsibility  for  his  illegitimate  children 
and  thus  assigns  to  him  a  standpoint  below  that 
of  the  beasts.  The  instincts  favourable  to  off- 
spring, which  in  animals  have  remained  undis- 
turbed, cannot  attain  their  full  strength  until 
man  is  completely  answerable  for  every  life  he 
creates.  As  soon  as  society  decrees  that  the  fact 
of  two  persons  becoming  parents  makes  their 
union  obligatory,  the  relationship  itself  will 
gradually  intensify  their  feeling  and  the  man  will 
wish  to  possess  and  preserve  the  elements  of  joy 
for  which  he  must  always  bear  the  burdens. 
Even  if  man's  fatherly  feelings  should  be  slow  in 
awaking — and  if  a  number  of  fathers  of  the 
present  day  should  thus  really  avail  themselves 
of  free  divorce  to  leave  wife  and  child — there  are 
still  the  mothers,  who  do  not,  as  a  rule,  lightly 
leave  their  children,  but  who,  on  the  contrary, 
now  suffer  the  deepest  misfortunes  and  renounce 
the  greatest  happiness  so  as  to  remain  with  them, 
and  who — even  if  they  tear  themselves  from  them 
— are  hardly  ever  able  to  release  themselves. 
When  the  law  gives  to  every  mother  the  rights 
which  now  only  the  unmarried  mother  possesses, 


Free  Divorce  335 

but  imposes  at  the  same  time  on  every  father  the 
obligations  which  now  only  the  married  have — 
then  it  may  be  that  the  child  will  become  a  new 
and  more  valuable  possession  in  the  eyes  of  the 
man.  If  he  only  feels  the  influence  he  may  obtain 
through  his  wife's  respect  for  his  fatherly  qualities; 
if  his  importance  in  the  child's  existence  comes 
to  depend  on  personal  force,  not  on  legal  might, 
then  the  quality  of  fatherhood  may  be  in  a  high 
degree  ennobled.  And  with  this  affection  will 
grow,  according  to  the  immutable  law,  that  the 
more  man  gives,  the  more  he  loves. 

If  matriarchy,  in  a  new  form,  refined  by  the 
whole  of  development,  should  become  the  final 
phase — as  in  the  opinion  of  many  it  has  been  the 
starting-point — of  the  family,  then  this  would 
involve  that  paternal  authority  became  con- 
ditional, depending  on  the  value  and  warmth  of 
the  paternal  feeling.  At  present  many  fathers 
are  merely  an  accident  in  their  children's  life,  an 
accident  which  never  even  looks  ''like  an  idea." 
And  this  is  not  only  true  of  those  fathers  who, 
with  the  support  of  the  law,  withdraw  themselves 
from  all  responsibility,  but  also  of  many  others, 
especially  of  those  who  are  driven  by  work  or 
public  business  and  who  remain  inwardly  strangers 
to  their  children. 

For  the  present,  it  may  be  regarded  as  certain 
that  free  divorce  would,  above  all,  afford  this 
advantage,  that  a  number  of  wives,  who  now  keep 
broken-down  husbands,  could  work  for  food  for 


336  Love  and  Marriage 

their  children  instead  of  for  Hquor  for  the  children's 
father;  and  that  a  number  of  mothers,  who  now 
are  obliged  for  the  sake  of  their  children  to  suffer 
the  deepest  humiliation,  would  be  able  to  free 
themselves;  and  in  both  cases  the  children  would 
gain.  On  the  other  hand,  the  father  who  took 
advantage  of  free  divorce  to  desert  his  family  for 
frivolous  reasons  might,  as  a  rule,  be  easily  spared 
by  that  family. 

In  most  cases,  the  children  are  even  better  off 
thixDugh  a  divorce,  when  the  cause  of  it  is  differences 
of  temperament  and  opinion  between  the  parents. 
Each  of  them  separately  may  be  a  person  of  merit. 
When  they  separate  on  the  ground  of  dissension, 
both  have  a  sense  of  something  to  atone  for  with 
the  children.  This  prompts  them  to  try  to  make 
amends,  and  thus  the  children  receive — from  each 
separately — far  more  than  they  did  when  the 
parents  were  united,  when  the  children  were 
witnesses  to  their  conflicts  and  saw  the  worse 
side  of  the  nature  of  each.  The  children  are 
spared  the  pain  of  being  the  subject  of  their 
father's  and  mother's  quarrels;  of  being  com- 
pelled to  take  the  part  of  one  of  them ;  of  being 
torn  between  two  diverse  wills,  between  the  jeal- 
ous endeavours  of  each  to  win  them  exclusively. 
They,  in  part,  avoid  being  brought  up  from  two 
different,  mutually-counteracting  points  of  view, 
where  one  is  trying  to  take  away  from  the  children 
the  ideas  that  the  other  has  given  them. 

But  of  all  this  the  opponents  of  divorce  take 


Free  Divorce  ^  337 

no  account.  The  main  thing  is  that  the  parents 
shall  keep  together,  however  chill  or  dark  with 
thunder  may  be  the  air  in  which  the  children 
grow  up. 

This  point  of  view  misses  the  reality  as  much  as 
that  of  those  who  call  for  divorce  as  soon  as  love  is 
over.  Keeping  together  may,  in  certain  cases, 
give  the  children  a  happier  and  richer  childhood 
than  the  state  of  things  after  a  divorce.  It 
has  been  maintained  with  reason  that  discord 
between  the  parents  is  sometimes  compensated 
for  by  the  value  of  the  manly  nature  of  the  one 
and  the  womanly  nature  of  the  other,  which — even 
if  they  do  not  co-operate — still  work  well  side  by 
side;  and  that  children  who,  through  dissensions 
at  home,  have  early  been  forced  to  think  and 
choose  for  themselves,  often  become  stronger 
characters  than  those  who  have  grown  up  in 
happy  homes. 

While,  on  the  one  hand,  we  hear  children 
whose  parents  have  separated  complain  that  they 
did  not  have  the  patience  to  remain  together,  on 
the  other  we  hear  those  who  have  grown  up  in 
unhappy  homes  regret  the  continuance  of  their 
parents'  married  life.  If  this  had  been  dissolved, 
the  children  might  have  had  at  least  one  good 
home,  perhaps  two,  whereas  now  they  have  none. 

But,  of  course,  each  one  can  know  only  what 
he  has  suffered  from  a  series  of  events,  not  what 
he  might  have  suffered  if  circumstances  had  been 
different ;  and  thus  the  children's  opinion  cannot 


338  Love  and  Marriage 

in  either  case  be  regarded  as  decisive,  when  laying 
down  the  principle. 

The  experience,  therefore,  which  we  have,  of 
the  position  of  children  whom  death  has  deprived 
of  their  father  is  more  important.  While  the 
widower,  as  a  rule,  marries  again,  if  his  children 
are  small,  the  widow,  in  most  cases,  remains 
unmarried.  And  it  may  be  regarded  as  certain 
that  statistics  of  able  men  would  give  a  remark- 
able result  in  respect  of  the  sons  of  widows. 

A  divorce  often  puts  the  child  in  a  corresponding 
position  of  tenderness  and  responsibility  towards 
his  mother.  But  while  society  bows  to  the 
** stern  necessity"  of  a  single  battle  making  more 
children  fatherless  than  the  divorces  of  a  genera- 
tion— and  calmly  relies  on  the  mothers'  ability 
by  themselves  to  make  good  citizens  of  their  sons 
— it  shrinks  from  the  same  stern  necessity  when 
it  is  a  question  of  saving  a  living  person  from 
lifelong  unhappiness. 

The  children's  chief  danger  in  a  divorce  is  that 
they  are  often  divided  between  father  and  mother 
and  thus  lose  in  part  the  companionship  of  brothers 
and  sisters  which  is  so  eminently  productive  of 
happiness.  Next  to  this,  the  greatest  misfortune 
is  not  that  the  father  and  mother  no  longer  live 
under  the  same  roof,  but  that  they  are  no  longer 
able  to  meet.  This  misfortune  could  often  be 
avoided,  if  friends  and  relations  would  refrain 
from  the  pleasure  of  deciding  how  the  divorced 
couple  ought  to  hate  and  variously  torment  each 


Free  Divorce  339 

other.  If  people  saw  the  merit  of  two  human 
beings — who  were  able  to  separate  as  friends  and 
to  meet  again  as  such — being  also  capable  of  this ; 
if  the  presence  of  either  parent  with  the  children 
never  led  to  their  being  influenced  to  the  detri- 
ment of  the  absent  one — then  children,  even 
after  a  divorce,  would  not  feel  the  want  of  their 
essential  relation  to  both  their  parents.  Now, 
on  the  other  hand,  divided  as  they  often  are 
between  two  mutually  hostile  parents,  separated 
thus  from  each  other  and — lacking  common 
memories  and  other  ties  to  bind  them — gradually 
becoming  strangers  to  each  other  when  they  meet, 
the  children  lose  so  much  by  a  divorce,  that 
parents  in  most  cases  can  gain  nothing  which 
makes  up  for  the  losses  of  the  children  and  thus 
prefer  to  bear  the  burdens  of  living  together 
rather  than  lay  those  of  divorce  upon  the  children. 

In  the  question  of  divorce  also,  the  great  funda- 
mental idea  of  protestantism  must  be  applied  in 
the  recognition  of  the  individual's  full  freedom  of 
choice,  since  no  case  can  be  decided  generally,  and 
since  here  also  the  right  and  wrong  can  only  be 
discovered  through  the  searching  of  each  individ- 
ual conscience. 

A  child  has  often — in  moments  of  great  crisis — 
blocked  the  way  which  led  from  the  door  of  the 
home.  But  the  home  within  that  door  did  not 
for  that  reason  become  brighter  or  warmer  for 
the  child. 


340  Love  and  Marriage^ 

In  the  preceding,  the  position  of  the  children  in 
divorce  has  been  considered  from  the  point  of 
view  of  discord  between  the  parents.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  divorce  is  brought  about  by  a 
new  feeHng  on  the  part  of  one  of  them,  then  this 
father  or  mother  must  be  prepared  one  day — 
when  the  children  can  understand  them — to  justify 
the  step  by  showing  them  how  the  new  love  has 
made  him  or  her  a  richer  and  greater  personality. 
The  children  have  a  full  right  not  to  be  sacrificed 
to  the  degradation  of  their  parents.  In  every 
case,  the  children  are  the  most  incorruptible 
judges  of  their  parents. 

But  the  fact  that  a  person  has  already  brought 
children  into  the  world  does  not  give  to  these 
children  an  unconditional  right  to  demand  that 
a  father  or  mother  shall  sacrifice  the  love  that 
may  advance  themselves,  and  through  them  the 
race,  to  which  they  may  thus  give  more  excellent 
children  or  more  excellent  works  than  the}^  have 
been  able  to  produce  hitherto.  Many  a  woman 
has  borne  children  to  her  husband  without  having 
seen  her  child;  many  a  man  has  given  the  com- 
munity his  industry  but  never  his  work — until 
great  love  accomplished  their  innermost  longing 
and  the  child  or  the  work  that  was  thus  created 
became  the  only  one  indispensable  to  the  race. 

The  claim  of  society  that  a  father  or  mother, 
radiant  with  possibilities  of  happiness,  shall  sacri- 
fice these  for  the  sake  of  the  children,  will  be 
reduced  when  the  sense  of  the  value  of  life    has 


Fr'ee  Divorce  341 

grown  and  the  duty  of  parents  to  live  for  their 
children  is  more  often  interpreted  to  mean  that 
they  must  continue  to  be  fully  alive,  with  powers 
of  renewal.  On  the  other  hand,  this  very  rejuve- 
nation of  parents  at  the  present  day  may  often 
result  in  their  living  so  rich  a  life  together  with 
their  children  that  they  will  need  no  other  renewal 
than  that  which  is  most  productive  of  happiness 
to  all  parties;  namely,  to  enjoy  their  "second 
spring-time'*  in  the  children's  first. 

If,  on  the  contrary,  the  result  of  this  prolonged 
youth  of  the  parents  is  that  a  father  or  mother 
changes  the  course  of  his  or  her  life,  then  the 
children  must  suffer — until  they  can  understand 
that  perhaps  in  a  deeper  sense  they  do  not  suffer 
thereby.  Sometimes  the  new  partner  has  exer- 
cised a  richer  influence  on  the  children  than  their 
own  father  or  mother — as  may  also  be  the  case 
with  a  step-father  or  step-mother.  At  present, 
however,  this  possibility  is  often  destroyed  by 
the  common  opinion  just  alluded  to,  which  also 
decides  that  the  children  ought  to  hate,  where, 
if  left  to  themselves,  they  would  perhaps  have 
learned  to  love. 

The  selfish  demand  of  grown-up  children  that 
the  life  of  their  parents  shall  in  and  with  them 
have  reached  its  climax  and  be  personally  con- 
cluded, is  as  cruel  as  it  is  unjustified,  since  there 
are  souls  which  do  not  lose  their  blossom  when 
the  fruit  appears,  but  are  able  at  the  same  time 
to  bear  both   fruit  and  new  blossom.     Children 


342  Love  and  Marriage 

receive  with  life  a  right  to  the  conditions  which 
may  make  them  fully  fit  for  life;  no  less  than 
this,  but  at  the  same  time  no  more.  What  their 
parents  may  be  willing  to  sacrifice  of  their  ow^n 
lives  beyond  this  must  be  reckoned  to  their 
generosity,  not  their  duty. 


If  great  love  may  thus  be  admitted  to  possess 
a  right  superior  to  that  of  the  children,  the 
question  obviously  arises,  how  is  this  love  to  be 
distinguished  from  the  accidental? 

A  mistake  is  already  a  hard  thing  in  a  marriage 
where  there  are  children,  for  the  obstacles  that 
have  to  be  surmounted  in  such  a  case  are  so 
serious  that  only  great  love  can  overcome  them — 
that  is,  if  the  parents  are  such  that  they  really 
mean  anything  at  all  to  their  children. 

It  is  precisely  by  its  genesis,  in  despite  of  all 
obstacles,  that  the  predestined  love  often  reveals 
its  nature  and  thus  becomes  what  is  called 
"criminal."  Even  if  those  who  are  possessed  by 
this  emotion  allow  duty  to  interpose  oceans 
between  them,  they  will,  nevertheless,  come 
together  in  every  great  moment  of  their  lives  until 
the  last,  convinced  that 

"his  kiss  was  on  her  lips  before  she  was  born." 

When  people  have  acquired  more  knowledge 
of  the  laws  of  psychology,  they  will  discover,  as 
Edward  Carpenter  has  said,  that  there  is  also  an 


Free  Divorce  343 

astronomy  in  the  world  of  emotion;  that  inter- 
dependence arises  there  also,  in  obedience  to 
eternal  laws;  sympathies  and  antipathies  which 
keep  all  the  ''heavenly  bodies"  at  the  right 
distance  or  proximity;  that  thus  the  path  of  love 
follows  an  equally  irresistible  necessity  as  the 
orbit  of  a  star  and  is  equally  impossible  to  de- 
termine by  any  influences  outside  its  own  laws. 
And  without  doubt  there  will  some  day  be  dis- 
covered a  telescope  for  this  field  also,  which  will 
at  last  reveal  to  the  short-sighted  the  fixed  stars, 
planets,  nebulae,  and  comets  of  erotic  space,  and 
will  prove  that  its  constellations  are  ordered  by 
a  higher  law  than  that  of  ''crude  instinct."  But 
until  we  attain  this  astronomical  certainty  we 
must  be  content  with  the  degree  of  knowledge 
that  art  criticism  can  give. 

Great  love,  like  a  great  artist,  has  its  style. 
Whatever  subject  the  latter  may  handle,  what- 
ever medium  he  may  use,  he  gives  to  the  canvas 
or  the  marble,  the  paper  or  the  metal,  the  impress 
of  his  hand,  and  this  reveals  itself  in  the  smallest 
thing  he  has  created.  So  in  every  age  and  every 
country,  every  class  and  every  time  of  life,  great 
love  is  one  and  the  same;  its  signs  are  unmis- 
takable, though  the  fortune  it  leads  to  and  the 
individuals  on  whom  it  sets  its  mark  may  in  one 
case  be  more  important  than  in  another. 

But  this  mighty  emotion — which  arouses  one's 
whole  being  through  another's  and  gives  one's 
whole  being  rest  in  another's — this  emotion  seizes 


344  Love  and  Marriage 

a  man  without  asking  whether  he  is  bound  or 
free.  He  who  feels  strongly  and  wholly  enough 
need  never  wonder  what  it  is  he  feels:  it  is  the 
feeble  emotion  that  is  doubtful  to  itself.  Nor 
does  he  who  feels  strongly  enough  ever  ask  him- 
self whether  he  has  a  right  to  his  feeling.  He  is  so 
exalted  by  his  love,  that  he  knows  he  is  thus 
exalting  the  life  of  mankind.  It  is  the  minor, 
partial  passions  that  a  person  already  bound  feels 
with  good  reason  to  be  "criminal."  For  him,  on 
the  other  hand,  who  would  call  his  great  emotion 
a  sinful  infatuation,  a  shameless  egoism,  a  bestial 
instinct,  one  who  loves  thus  has  nothing  but  a 
smile  of  pity.  He  knows  that  he  would  commit 
a  sin  in  killing  his  love,  just  as  he  would  in  mur- 
dering his  child.  He  knows  that  his  love  has 
once  more  made  him  good  as  in  his  childhood's 
prayers  to  God,  and  rich  as  one  for  whom  the 
gates  of  paradise  are  opened  anew. 

Art  is  interpreting  a  universal  experience  when 
it  always  depicts  Adam  and  Eve  as  young  when 
they  are  driven  out  of  Eden.  One  wonders  that 
no  artist  has  shown  them — at  a  maturer  age — 
outside  the  walls  of  paradise,  tormented  by  the 
sense  of  now  possessing  wisdom  enough  to  preserve 
the  happiness  for  which  in  youth  they  only  pos- 
sessed the  means. 

For  there  not  unfrequently  arrives  a  time  in 
human  life  when  enlightenment  enters  before 
coldness  has  set  in;  when  the  blossoms  are  still 
rich  although  the  fruits  have  already  begun  to 


Free  Divorce  345 

mature.  It  is  then  that  great  happiness  is  often 
seen  for  an  instant  and  then  disappears.  Some- 
times she  is  never  seen,  for  she  comes  softly  and — 
Hke  a  playmate — lays  a  hand  over  one's  eyes, 
asking:  Who  am  I?  One  guesses  wrongly  and 
happiness  is  gone  before  one  can  bid  her  stay. 
To  her  favourites  only  does  she  come  with  her 
hands  full  and  open.  To  the  majority  the  words 
of  the  dying  Hebbel  are  true:  We  human  beings 
lack  either  the  cup  or  the  wine. 

Love's  deepest  tragedy  is  that  a  number  of 
people  have  first  to  learn  through  their  mistakes 
before  their  souls  and  senses  are  ready  for  the 
great  love  which  of  two  beings  makes  one  more 
perfect. 

In  poetry  as  in  life  it  is  sometimes  the  first  love, 
sometimes  the  last,  that  is  extolled  as  the  strongest. 
Neither  need  be,  and  either  may  be,  this.  The 
strongest  love  is  that  which — at  whatever  age  it 
comes — most  takes  up  all  the  forces  of  personality. 

It  also  sometimes  happens  that  not  imtil  a 
person  ought  to  have  done  with  love,  is  he  really 
ready  for  it.  The  fewer  are  then  the  chances  of 
finding  the  love  he  wishes  to  give  and  receive. 
And  fewer  still  the  chances  that  he  can  give  him- 
self up  to  them,  with  the  concurrence  of  his  whole 
being. 

For  it  is  one  thing  to  have  the  right  to  one's 
great  emotion;  another  to  have  the  right  or  the 
possibility  of  one's  full  happiness. 

Love  may  be  never  so  free  in  its  social  aspect; 


34^  Love  and  Marriage 

no  freedom  of  morals  or  of  divorce  can  release  the 
sons  of  men  from  the  inevitable  sufferings  of 
their  own  nature,  nor  from  the  inevitable  conflicts 
of  their  connection  with  the  past.  These  suffer- 
ings and  conflicts  have  been  made  so  deep  by  life 
itself  that  there  is  indeed  no  necessity  for  the  law 
to  make  them  deeper. 

The  most  usual  form  of  the  conflict  is  that  a 
person  is  bound  by  or  broken  by  casual  love — 
whether  wedded  or  free — when  the  predestined 
intervenes  in  his  existence. 

That  so  many  more  unhappy  marriages  con- 
tinue than  are  dissolved  may  be  due  less  to  a 
sense  of  duty  than  to  the  fact  that  only  a  few 
are  capable  of  great  emotions.  Peer  Gynt's 
symbol — the  bulb — illustrates  the  erotic  nature 
of  the  majority.  It  flowers  as  readily  in  sand  as 
in  water,  in  the  open  as  in  a  pot.  But  should 
an  acorn  be  planted  in  a  pot,  it  is  inevitable — on 
account  of  the  vital  conditions  of  the  oak — that 
it  should  one  day  burst  its  prison  or  die. 

And  in  such  a  case,  it  is  unfortunate  when  a 
Christian  ethical  view  stands  in  the  way  of 
serious  and  genuine  chances  of  so  renewing  life 
that  it  may  be  more  valuable  to  the  community 
as  well  as  to  the  individual  himself.  People  who 
are  equipped  with  rich  possibilities  still  allow 
themselves  to  be  decided  by  unconditional  con- 
sideration for  others'  feelings,  which,  taken  from 
Christianity,  have  been  grafted  even  on  evolu- 
tionism, and   which,    especially   through   George 


Free  Divorce  347 

Eliot,  have  obtained  their  great  but  one-sided 
expression. 

That  the  race  not  only  needs  people  willing  to 
lose  their  lives  in  order  to  gain  them,  but  also 
people  with  courage  to  sacrifice  others  in  order 
to  win  their  own — this  is  a  truth  which  never- 
theless must  be  indissolubly  bound  up  with  an 
evolutionist  view  of  life,  to  which  the  will  to 
preserve  and  enhance  one's  own  existence  is  a 
duty  as  undeniable  as  that  of  preserving  and 
enhancing  the  lives  of  others  by  self-sacrifice. 
To  have  the  courage  of  one's  happiness,  to  be 
able  to  bear  the  pain  inseparable  from  a  rupture 
without  pangs  of  conscience,  is  only  in  the  power 
of  those  who  act  from  their  innermost  necessity. 
That  pairs  of  lovers  outside  the  law  now  so  often 
commit  suicide  together  is  no  proof  of  the  over- 
mastering power  of  love;  it  rather  proves  the 
powerlessness  of  their  emotion  to  dare  and  win 
the  right  of  direct  and  immediate  living  and  thus 
increasing  the  riches  of  life.  For  it  is  only  to  a 
love  that  is  throughout  a  will  to  live  that  cir- 
c^imstances  become  as  wax  in  the  artist's  hand. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  religion  of  Life 
this  impotence  is  regrettable,  just  as  much  as 
secret  adultery.  Doubtless  both  may  possess  the 
beauty  of  a  great  love-tragedy.  Probably  no  one 
who  ha>s  read  the  Inferno  wished  Francesca 
strength  to  reject  the  love  of  Paolo.  And  so 
strangely  does  a  soul  find  the  way  home  to  itself, 
that  there  are  cases  where  a  person  in  adultery 


348  Love  and  Marriage 

feels  himself  purified  from  the  defilement  of 
marriage — since  he  thus  for  the  first  time 
experiences  the  unity  of  soul  and  senses  which 
was  his  dream  of  love  from  the  beginning. 

But  even  in  these  exceptional  cases — so  much 
the  more,  therefore,  in  others — the  secret  trans- 
gression, which  the  older  morality  found  com- 
paratively innocuous,  is  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  new  morality  greater  than  the  open  rupture. 
For  the  personality  is  humiliated  by  the  duplicity 
and  the  weakness  whereby  one  avoids  the  respon- 
sibility of  the  consequences  of  one's  actions. 
And  this,  moreover,  decreases  the  life-value  of  love 
to  the  race.  New  experiments  in  life,  which  are 
made  openly,  which  enhance  the  strength  of  the 
individual  through  conflict  and  earnestness,  may 
possess  an  importance  for  the  personality  itself 
and  for  society  which  secret  transgressions  in 
most  cases  lack. 

A  poet  or  an  artist,  for  example,  has  a  wife,  as 
to  whose  insufficiency  for  him  all  are  agreed — so 
long  as  he  still  has  her.  Suddenly  he  finds  the 
space,  that  was  empty  and  waste,  filled  by  a 
new  creation ;  the  air  becomes  alive  with  songs  and 
visions.  He  not  only  feels  his  slumbering  powers 
awake,  he  knows  that  great  love  has  called  up  in 
him  powers  he  had  never  suspected ;  he  sees  that 
now  he  will  be  able  to  accomplish  what  he  could 
never  have  done  before.  He  follows  the  life-will 
of  his  love,  and  he  does  right.  Marriages 
kept  inviolable  have  doubtless  produced  many 


Free  Divorce  349 

great  advantages  to  culture.  But  it  is  not  to 
them  that  art  and  poetry  owe  their  greatest  debt 
of  gratitude.  Without  "unhappy"  or  ''crimi- 
nal" love,  the  world's  creations  of  beauty  would 
at  this  moment  be  not  only  infinitely  fewer,  but, 
above  all,  infinitely  poorer.  Nay,  after  such  an 
exclusion  the  whole  spiritual  world  might  appear 
as  some  medias  val  church,  decorated  from  floor 
to  roof  with  frescoes,  appeared  after  the  white- 
washing of  the  Reformation. 

But  in  a  choice  such  as  we  have  just  mentioned, 
public  opinion  is  always  certain  that  the  sufferings 
of  the  wife,  unimportant  as  she  is  to  the  commun- 
ity, are  the  great  thing,  while  those  of  the  man, 
important  to  the  community,  may  be  disregarded. 

He,  however,  who  experiences  the  new  spring 
which  flowers  in  song,  in  tones,  in  colours,  raises 
the  life  of  generation  after  generation,  centuries 
after  the  one  person  or  the  few  who  suffered 
through  him  have  long  ceased  to  suffer. 

Who  would  have  gained  what  the  race  would 
have  lost  through  his  self-sacrifice?  Not  the 
wife,  if  she  had  a  heart,  and  not  only  a  pride, 
which  could  suffer. 

Not  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  universal, 
but  from  that  of  individual  life-enhancement, 
we  ought  not  to  give  all  our  sympathy  to  the  one 
who  is  called  ''heart-broken."  Why  is  the  heart 
that  is  broken  considered  so  much  more  valuable 
than  the  one  or  the  two  which  must  cause  the  pain 
lest  they  themselves  perish?    And  why  will  people 


350  Love  and  Marriage 

not  see  that  he  who  is  looked  upon  as  "broken- 
hearted" sometimes  finds  a  new  and  richer  hap- 
piness? But,  above  all,  why  is  it  constantly 
forgotten  that  one  who  suffers  through  sorrow 
often  becomes  greater  than  he  could  ever  have 
been  in  the  secure  possession  of  his  "property"? 

There  are  other  ways  of  living  on  a  great 
emotion  than  that  of  being  in  the  usual  sense 
made  happy  by  it. 

This  must,  however,  be  remembered  above  all 
by  him  who,  already  tied,  is  seized  by  a  new  feel- 
ing. If  all  three  parties  are  high-minded  enough, 
it  has  sometimes  happened  that  the  feeling  has 
been  transformed  into  an  amitié  amoureuse, 
which  has  made  all  of  them  richer  and  none  of 
them  unhappy — even  if  it  has  made  none  of  them 
completely  happy. 

But  even  under  other  circumstances  people 
ought  to  remember,  that  one  does  not  always  own 
what  one  has — and  sometimes  possesses  most 
surely  what  one  has  never  owned. 

The  sanctity  and  loftiness  of  one's  own  feeling 
is  the  indestructible  part  of  happiness  in  love. 
No  longer  to  be  able  to  love  is  the  greatest  sorrow. 
But  a  person  no  more  becomes  less  worthy  of 
love  because  his  own  love  is  dead,  than  he  becomes 
so  through  leaving  love  unrequited. 

Therefore,  he  alone  can  feel  himself  really 
ruined  who  has  been  nothing  but  the  means  of 
another's  pleasure  or  sport,  development  or  work; 
a  means  that  is  cast  off  when  it  no  longer  affords 


Free  Divorce  35 1 

enjoyment  or  profit.  The  person  who  is  thus 
betrayed  in  love,  either  because  love  never  existed 
or  because  its  past  existence  is  denied ;  who  sees 
the  personality  he  loved  unveiled  as  another  than 
he  believed  himself  to  be  loving — this  person  must 
exert  his  whole  soul  to  save  it  from  being  nar- 
rowed, embittered,  and  destroyed.  All  other 
great  blows  of  fate  may  be  borne  in  such  a  way 
that  a  man  grows  by  them:  but  to  lose  faith  in 
a  human  being  is  the  greatest  pain  of  all,  since 
it  is  also  the  most  unfruitful ;  since  it  in  no  respect 
enlarges  the  soul  or  enhances  the  existence. 

But  even  from  this  suffering  the  soul  may 
finally  raise  itself  through  the  consciousness  that 
it  has  too  great  a  value  of  its  own  to  allow  itself 
to  be  destroyed  by  the  baseness  or  pettiness  of 
another.  Only  he  who  has  fought  out  the  battle 
alone  in  all  the  horrors  of  the  desert  night  knows 
what  the  sunrise  is.  Years  later  it  may  fall  to  the 
lot  of  such  a  man,  who  at  one  blow  has  lost  every- 
thing— the  sanctity  of  his  memories,  the  meaning 
of  his  experiences,  the  faith  of  his  love — ^himself 
to  see  the  truth  of  the  great,  calm  thinker's 
exhortation :  that  one  ought  neither  to  laugh  nor 
;weep  at,  exalt  nor  curse  a  human  being's  actions, 
but  only  to  try  to  understand  them  (Spinoza). 
And  then  there  begins  for  him  a  great  and  diffi- 
cult work,  which  perhaps  will  last  as  long  as  life 
lasts,  the  work  of  looking  into  the  depths  of  this 
other  soul;  of  again  reviewing  the  past  in  the 
perspective  of   distance;   of  perceiving  his  own 


352  Love  and  Marriage 

limitations  as  well  as  those  of  the  other,  and  thus 
beginning  to  understand.  This  is  the  only  for- 
giveness there  is. 

But  thus  a  person  once  dead  and  buried  in  the 
midst  of  life  may  finally  see  the  grass  grow  green 
and  the  sun  shine  over  his  grave. 


If  this  can  become  true — and  it  has  become 
true  for  many  people  whom  others  regarded  as 
broken-hearted — how  much  more  then  is  it  not 
true  to  him  who  has  once  been  really  rich  and 
has  never  been  robbed  of  his  greatest  treasure, 
the  glory  of  his  own  love? 

A  woman,  for  example,  who  for  years  of  her 
life  has  possessed  complete  happiness  and  through 
this  has  become  a  mother — will  she  be  robbed 
of  it  all,  if  this  happiness  comes  to  an  end? 

There  is  still  the  happiness  of  others  to  serve, 
the  sufferings  of  others  to  alleviate,  the  great 
ends  of  humanity  to  further.  To  many  a  one 
who  has  never  even  had  a  happiness  of  his  own 
this  must  still  be  sufficient  consolation.  But  we 
judge  of  happiness  as  of  wealth.  That  innumer- 
able human  beings  daily  perish  from  want  makes 
little  impression  on  us.  But  if  one  of  our  friends 
falls  from  riches  into  poverty,  this  seems  to  us 
dreadful.  We  forget  that  he  may  perhaps, 
through  poverty,  attain  a  development  that 
riches  never  won  for  him;  that  he  who  is  robbed 
by  fortune  may  make  a  new  position  for  himself. 


Free  Divorce  353 

Life  has  countless  possibilities  as  well  as  count- 
less contradictions.  It  is  full  of  secret  remedial 
powers  as  well  as  of  hidden  causes  of  death. 
And,  finally,  it  is,  therefore,  very  uncertain 
whether  it  is  not  the  two  who  come  together  that 
are  ''torn  asunder" — while  the  one  abandoned 
remains  whole. 

For  loving  is  a  healing  medicine  even  for  the 
wounds  love  gives.  Only  one  thing  a  loving 
person  cannot  bear,  to  see  the  dear  ones  suffer. 
To  take  one's  self  silently  away  in  order  to  spare 
them  pain  is  within  the  power  of  great  love.  And 
this  does  not  mean  a  tame  resignation  watering 
the  red  stream  of  the  blood.  It  means  that  love 
has  become  so  great  that  it  takes  seriously  the 
great  words  so  lightly  uttered  in  happiness,  that 
torments  caused  by  the  beloved  were  dearer  than 
joys  given  by  others.  When  love  has  become 
the  power  in  which  a  person  lives  and  moves  and 
has  his  being,  the  words  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Corinthians  on  love  are  fulfilled  in  a  more  beautiful 
way  than  Paul  dreamed  of.  Great  love  does  not 
only  love  for  the  sake  of  loving;  it  attains  the 
incredible:  to  love  the  loved  one  more  than  one's 
own  feeling.  If  it  were  a  question  of  thus  pro- 
viding for  the  other  a  more  perfect  happiness, 
this  love  would  be  able  to  quench  its  own  flame 
and  with  it  the  fulness  of  pain  and  of  joy  that 
life  had  gained  from  this  feeling.  Women  some- 
times make  such  a  sacrifice.  Here  and  there  a 
man  has  been  capable  of  it.  But  he  who  has 
23 


354  Love  and  Marriage 

attained  to  this  height  of  emotion  lives  so  wonder- 
ful a  life  that  the  happiness  the  united  couple 
create  for  each  other  must  be  extraordinarily 
great  if  these  two  rich  ones  are  not  in  reality  to 
be  the  poorer. 

When  the  thought  has  once  become  inherent  in 
mankind  that  no  one  can  be  happy  without  the 
feeling  that  he  is  making  others  happy;  that 
only  the  highest  development  of  one's  own  feeling 
is  imperishable  happiness ;  that  all  other  happiness 
is  charity,  not  justice — then  there  will  be  fewer 
torn  asunder,  even  if  there  be  no  more  happy 
ones. 

But  love  is  still  such,  men,  women,  and  the 
people  around  them  are  still  such,  that  one  would 
rather  wish  a  tied  man  or  woman  strength  to 
endure  marriage  than  to  break  it,  at  least  if  they 
have  children  who  must  share  with  them  the 
unknown  fortunes  of  their  love.  Before  these,  if 
ever,  one  feels  the  meaning  of  the  Breton  fisher's 
song: 

...  la  mer  est  grande  et  ma  barque  est  petite  .,  .  . 

How  often  has  not  the  little  boat,  fraught  with 
life's  last  riches,  been  lost  on  the  wide  sea? 

But  therefore  it  is  that  no  one  there  seeks 
his  pleasure,  but  only  his  life. 


That  our  actions  in  the  erotic  sphere — as  in 
every    other — must   call    forth    the   criticism  of 


Free  Divorce  355 

others  is  just  as  unavoidable  as  that  our  figure 
should  be  reflected  in  a  mirror  as  we  pass.  But 
public  opinion  is  a  convex  mirror,  a  globe  swollen 
by  prejudice,  which  distorts  the  image.  Only  a 
clear  and  calm  soul  gives  a  true  picture  of  another's 
actions. 

And  to  such  a  soul,  it  will  not  imfrequently  be 
apparent  that  the  "transgression"  was  right  for 
one  nature  and  not  for  the  other.  The  latter  will 
have  felt  that  its  innermost  being  would  have 
been  outraged  if  fidelity  to  the  past  had  not  been 
preserved  to  the  uttermost — and  will  have  chosen 
to  allow  its  erotic  powers  to  wither  and  to  live 
only  by  the  will  of  duty.  Of  this  kind  of  self- 
immolation  the  same  is  true  as  of  its  bodily 
counterpart:  sometimes  they  are  great  souls, 
sometimes  great  cowards.  Nay,  the  same  sacri- 
fice may  be  sublime  at  one  period  of  our  Hves  and 
shameful  at  another. 

Life  never  shows  us  *' marriage,"  but  countless 
different  marriages;  never  "love,"  but  countless 
lovers.  He  who  sets  up  an  ideal  in  these  matters 
must,  therefore,  be  content  with  possibly  working 
for  the  future,  but  should  not  use  his  ideal  as  a 
criterion  for  the  present.  Nay,  he  ought  not  even 
to  desire  in  the  future  the  sole  authority  of  his 
own  ideal — since  a  descent  from  the  diverse  to 
the  uniform  would  be  a  retrogressive  development. 

The  effort  of  society  to  press  into  a  single  ideal 
form  life's  infinite  multitude  of  different  cases 
under  the  same  circumstances  or  of  the  same 


356  Love  and  Marriage 

cases  under  different  circumstances,  the  same  in- 
fluences on  different  personalities  or  the  same 
personalities  under  different  influences — this  has 
been  in  the  field  of  sexual  morality  as  violent 
a  proceeding  as  would  be  the  establishment  for 
all  figures  of  Polycletus's  canon  of  beauty.  The 
madness  of  the  latter  proceeding  would  be  obvious. 
But  violence  to  souls  is  not  so  obvious.  There- 
fore it  is  always  established  by  law. 

Not  until  the  diversity  of  souls  becomes  in  our 
ideas  a  truth  as  real  as  the  diversity  of  our  bodies 
shall  we  perceive  that  of  all  dogmas  monogamy 
has  been  that  which  has  claimed  most  human 
sacrifices.  It  will  one  day  be  admitted  that  the 
auto-da-fes  of  marriage  have  been  just  as  valueless 
to  true  morality  as  those  of  religion  were  to  the 
true  faith. 

The  Grand  Inquisitors  of  the  past  probably 
resembled  those  of  the  present  day  in  that, 
when  confronted  by  a  particular  case  within  the 
circle  of  their  own  friends  and  relations,  they 
found  easily  enough  extenuating  circumstances 
which  they  did  not  otherwise  admit.  But  we 
must  learn  to  see  that  every  case  is  a  separate 
case  and  that,  therefore,  sometimes  a  new  rule — 
not  only  an  exception  to  an  old  rule — becomes 
necessary.  We  cannot  any  longer  maintain  this 
double  standard  for  known  or  unknown,  for 
friends  or  enemies,  for  literature  or  life.  It  must 
be  abolished  by  an  earnest  desire  for  genuine 
morality. 


Free  Divorce  357 

This  double  standard  shows  us,  however,  that 
even  among  the  orthodox  of  monogamy  the 
impossibiHty  of  carrying  out  a  monogamous 
morality  which  shall  apply  to  all  is  beginning  to 
be  perceived.  But  the  effort,  nevertheless,  to 
attain  in  some  degree  the  impossible  now  stands 
in  the  way  of  the  possible,  which  is  germinating 
here  and  there:  the  attainment  of  the  morality 
of  love. 

Although  the  new  life  is  already  showing  its 
strength — like  spring  flowers  that  push  their  way 
through  last  year's  carpet  of  dead  foliage — the 
withered  leaves  must  yet  be  cleared  away.  ^  And 
only  they  who  do  not  perceive  the  power  of  the 

^  Before  1857,  no  legal  divorce  in  the  usual  meaning  of  the 
term  existed  in  England.  The  ecclesiastical  courts  could  grant 
a  sort  of  "divorce  from  bed  and  board,"  whereupon  the  ag- 
grieved party  could  get  rid  of  his  unfaithful  half  by  a  special 
Act  of  Parliament  in  each  particular  case.  As  a  consequence, 
only  very  wealthy  people  could  afford  this  luxury,  for  it  cost 
immense  sums  to  get  a  special  motion  of  this  kind  through 
Parliament.  The  further  injustice  prevailed,  that  in  practice  this 
course  was  open  only  to  men,  not  to  women. 

It  was,  moreover,  with  the  greatest  difficulty  that  Palmerston 
succeeded  in  carrying  the  reform  of  1857.  The  friends  of  reform 
urged  above  all  that  the  old  law  was  unjust  to  poor  people,  and 
that  among  both  rich  and  poor  it  had  become  increasingly 
common  to  marry  again  in  an  illegal  way,  so  that  in  the  eyes 
of  the  law  thousands  of  people  in  England  were  living  in  bigamy. 

The  new  law  of  1857  introduced  a  separate  secular  court  for 
divorce  causes,  divorce  was  made  legal,  and  the  possibility  of 
taking  advantage  of  it  was  placed  within  the  reach  of  others 
than  the  wealthiest. 

But  the  experience  of  fifty  years  has  shown  that  divorce 
procedure  is  still  altogether  too  costly  for  the  poor,  and  entails 


35^  Love  and  Marriage 

new  spring  are  afraid  that  the  earth  will  not  be 
able  to  dispense  with  its  withered  protection. 

an  infinity  of  time  and  trouble.  Furthermore,  a  number  of 
revolting  injustices  remain. 

Thus,  for  instance,  a  wife  cannot  obtain  legal  divorce  from 
her  husband  either  because  he  is  an  habitual  drunkard,  or  an 
incurable  lunatic,  or  is  imprisoned  for  life  for  some  grave  crime, 
or  has  abandoned  his  home  and  refused  to  contribute  to  the 
support  of  his  wife  and  children!  The  most  she  can  obtain 
under  such  circumstances  is  a  judicial  separation — which  makes 
it  possible  for  either  party  to  enter  into  any  illegitimate  con- 
nection they  please.  A  husband  can  obtain  divorce  from  his 
wife  if  he  can  prove  a  single  case  of  infidelity  on  her  part;  but 
the  wife  cannot  obtain  divorce  from  her  husband  even  if  he  can 
be  proved  to  be  living  in  continual  adultery.  In  order  to  get 
rid  of  him  she  must  be  able  to  prove  that  he  has  been  guilty 
of  cruelty  towards  her  or  has  deserted  her  for  a  period  of  two 
years. 

The  worst  thing  is  that  the  greater  offence  is  punished  far 
more  leniently  than  the  less.  A  wife  can  get  a  judicial  separation 
on  account  of  her  husband's  infidelity,  but  loses  therewith  the 
right  of  proceeding  against  him  for  divorce,  and  neither  she  nor 
her  husband  may  marry  again.  But  if  the  husband  has  also 
been  guilty  of  cruelty  to  her,  she  obtains  a  divorce,  and  then 
both  she  and  her  husband  are  at  liberty  to  remarry.  The  man 
who  deceives  his  wife  is  not  free  to  marry  another;  but  if  he 
both  deceives  her  and  beats  her,  he  is  divorced  and  may  marry 
again ! 

In  general  the  opponents  of  the  existing  law  declare  that 
it  contributes  powerfully  to  the  formation  of  illegitimate 
connections. 


CHAPTER  IX 


A  NEW  MARRIAGE  LAW 


It  results  from  the  foregoing  that  the  ideal 
form  of  marriage  is  considered  to  be  the  perfectly 
free  union  of  a  man  and  a  woman,  who  through 
mutual  love  desire  to  promote  the  happiness  of 
each  other  and  of  the  race. 

But  as  development  does  not  proceed  by  leaps 
no  one  can  hope  that  the  whole  of  society  will 
attain  this  ideal  otherwise  than  through  transi- 
tional forms.  These  must  preserv^e  the  property 
of  the  old  form:  that  of  expressing  the  opinion  of 
society  on  the  morality  of  sexual  relations — and 
thus  providing  a  support  for  the  undeveloped — 
but  at  the  same  time  must  be  free  enough  to 
promote  a  continued  development  of  the  higher 
erotic  consciousness  of  the  present  time.  The 
modern  man  considers  himself  supreme  in  the 
sense  that  no  divine  or  human  authority  higher 
than  the  collective  power  of  individuals  them- 
selves can  make  the  laws  that  confine  his  liberty. 
But  he  admits  the  necessity  of  a  legal  limitation 
of  freedom,  when  this  prepares  the  way  for  a 
more  perfect  future  system  for  the  satisfaction 

359 


36o  Love  and  Marriage 

of  the  needs  of  the  individual  and  a  more  com- 
plete freedom  for  the  use  of  his  powers.  Insight 
into  the  present  erotic  needs  and  powers  of 
individuals  must  thus  be  the  starting-point  of  a 
modem  marriage  law,  but  not  any  abstract 
theories  about  the  ''idea  of  the  family"  or  juri- 
dical considerations  of  the  ''historical  origin"  of 
marriage. 

Since,  as  already  pointed  out,  society  is  the 
organisation  which  results  when  human  beings 
set  themselves  in  motion  to  satisfy  their  needs 
and  exercise  their  powers  in  common,  it  must  also 
be  in  a  condition  of  uninterrupted  transformation 
according  as  new  needs  arise  and  new  powers  are 
developed.  This  has  now  taken  place  in  the 
erotic  sphere,  especially  since  those  emotional 
needs  and  powers  of  the  soul,  which  formerly 
were  nourished  by  and  directed  towards  religion, 
have  been  nourished  by  and  directed  towards 
love.  Love  itself  is  thus  becoming  more  and 
more  a  religion,  and  one  which  demands  new 
forms  for  its  practice. 

But  while  the  individualist  can  only  be  satisfied 
with  the  full  freedom  of  love,  he  is  compelled  by 
the  sense  of  solidarity,  at  least  for  the  present, 
to  demand  a  new  law  for  marriage,  since  the 
majority  is  not  yet  ready  for  perfect  freedom. 


The  sense  of  solidarity  and  individualism  have 
equally    weighty   reasons    for    condemning    the 


A  New  Marriage  Law  361 

existing  institution  of  marriage.  It  forces  upon 
human  beings,  who  are  seldom  ideal,  a  unity 
which  only  an  ideal  happiness  renders  them 
capable  of  supporting.  It  fulfils  one  of  its  mis- 
sions— that  of  protecting  the  woman — in  a  way 
that  is  now  humiliating  to  her  human  dignity.  It 
performs  its  second  function — that  of  protecting 
the  children — in  an  extremely  imperfect  fashion. 
Its  third — that  of  setting  up  an  ideal  of  the  moral- 
ity of  sexual  relations — it  performs  in  such  a  way 
that  this  ideal  is  now  a  hindrance  to  the  further 
development  of  morality. 

From  a  realistic  point  of  view,  what  is 
the  value  of  matrimony  to  a  woman?  That 
the  present  law  compels  the  husband  to  pro- 
vide for  his  wife  and  for  the  children  bom  in 
wedlock,  and  that  at  the  death  of  the  husband  it 
secures  to  her  the  widow's  share  in  his  estate  and 
to  the  legitimate  children  their  inheritance.  But 
she  pays  for  these  economical  advantages  by 
resigning  the  right  over  her  children,  her  property, 
her  work,  her  person,  which  she  possessed  when 
unmarried.  Even  when  there  is  a  marriage 
settlement  the  husband — as  guardian  and  admin- 
istrator of  his  wife's  property — may  squander 
this,  as  well  as  the  proceeds  of  her  work ;  he  can 
forbid  her  exercise  of  a  calling  or  sell  the  imple- 
ments of  its  exercise.  In  the  eyes  of  the  law,  she 
is  placed  on  a  footing  with  her  children  who  are 
under  age :  her  husband  has  to  sue  and  to  answer 
for   her,  and    there    are    certain  iunctions   of  a 


362  Love  and  Marriage 

citizen  which  she  cannot  perform  at  all,  while 
others,  which  she  could  perform  if  unmarried,  she 
can  fulfil  only  with  her  husband's  consent. 

As  concerns  the  children,  the  law  leaves  those 
bom  outside  wedlock  entirely  without  rights, 
except  for  an  insufficient  contribution  to  their 
bringing-up,  if  the  father  does  not  free  himself 
from  this  by  oath.  The  law  provides  very  im- 
perfectly for  the  welfare  of  the  new  generation 
by  limiting  the  right  of  marriage  to  certain  degrees 
of  affinity,  refusing  it  in  the  case  of  certain  dis- 
eases, and  fixing  the  age  for  lawful  marriage  at 
fifteen  to  seventeen  for  the  woman  and  twenty-one 
years  for  the  man.  ^ 

Finally,  marriage  binds  the  wife  to  the  husband 
and  him  to  her,  by  the  fact  that  neither  can 
obtain  a  divorce  without  the  other's  consent 
unless  certain  acts  of  ill-treatment  or  misconduct 
can  be  proved.  Even  when  married  people 
agree  to  a  divorce,  it  entails  a  painful  procedure 
for  both  of  them  and  poor  guarantees  for  the 
children's  welfare.  If  the  man  refuses  a  divorce, 
the  woman — owing  to  the  above-mentioned  obli- 
gation of  proof,  frequently  impossible — is  forced 
to  remain  with  a  man  she  despises,  since  only  thus 
can  she  keep  her  children  and  receive  support.  If 
the  husband  is  no  longer  capable  of  providing  this; 
if,  perhaps,  he  has  squandered  means  belonging 
to  her  which  would  have  provided  it ;  nay,  if  the 

*  These  details  refer,  of  course,  to  the  Swedish  law. — Trans- 
lator. 


A  New  Marriage  Law  363 

wife,  by  her  own  work,  is  keeping  him,  herself, 
and  the  children,  he  still  retains  the  same  authority 
over  her  and  them. 

-  The  unmarried  woman,  on  the  other  hand,  who 
has  given  her  love  "freely" — that  is,  without  legal 
compensation  in  the  form  of  a  right  of  mainten- 
ance— retains  full  authority  over  her  children,  as 
well  as  personal  liberty,  responsibility,  and  civil 
rights.  In  other  words,  she  retains  all  that  gives 
her  a  dignified  position  as  a  human  being  in  soci- 
ety— but  loses  the  respect  of  society  and  economic 
security.  The  married  woman,  on  the  other  hand, 
loses  all  that  is  important  to  a  member  of  society 
of  full  age,  but  retains  the  respect  of  society,  her 
right  of  inheritance,  and  her  support. 

Truly,  society  has  not  made  it  easy  for  woman 
to  fulfil  her  ''natural  mission" !  That  she  never- 
theless— under  one  or  other  of  these  two  alter- 
natives— still  gladly  performs  it,  is  strong  evidence 
that  it  must  be  the  most  powerful  demand  of  her 
nature.  If  other  needs  become  stronger — as  is 
already  the  case  with  some  women — then  the  con- 
ditions of  either  alternative  will  be  unacceptable. 
And  as  the  new  women  are  still  less  likely  to  con- 
tent themselves  with  the  two  other  extremes — 
lifelong  asceticism  or  prostitution — a  new  marriage 
has  become  for  them  a  condition  of  life. 


The  marriage  law  now  in  force  is  a  geological 
formation,  with  stratifications  belonging  to  vari- 


364  Love  and  Marriage 

ous  phases  of  culture  now  concluded.  Our  own 
phase  alone  has  left  few  and  unimportant  traces 
in  it. 

It  has  been  perceived  in  our  time  that  love 
ought  to  be  the  moral  ground  of  marriage.  And 
love  rests  upon  equality.  But  the  law  of  marriage 
dates  from  a  time  when  the  importance  of  love 
was  not  yet  recognised.  It,  therefore,  rests  upon 
the  inequality  between  a  lord  and  his  dependent. 

Our  time  has  given  to  the  unmarried  woman 
the  opportunity  of  making  her  own  living,  a  legal 
status,  and  civil  rights.  But  the  marriage  law 
dates  from  a  time  when  women  had  none  of  these 
things.  The  married  woman,  thus,  under  this 
law,  now  occupies  a  position  in  sharp  contrast 
to  the  independence  of  the  unmarried,  which  has 
been  acquired  since  that  time. 

Our  time  has  displaced  the  ancient  division  of 
labour,  by  which  the  wife  cared  for  the  children 
and  the  husband  provided  maintenance.  But 
the  law  of  marriage  dates  from  a  time  when  this 
division  held  full  sway  and  when  it  was,  therefore, 
almost  impossible  for  a  woman  to  receive  protec- 
tion for  herself  and  her  child  otherwise  than  in 
matrimony.  Now  society  has  begun  to  provide 
such  protection  for  unmarried  mothers,  and  the 
renunciation  of  liberty  by  which  the  wife  pur- 
chases the  protection  of  marriage  is  seen  to  be 
not  only  more  and  more  unworthy,  but  also 
unnecessary. 

Oui  time  has  recognised  more  and  more  the 


A  New  Marriage  Law  365 

importance  of  every  child  as  a  new  member  of 
society  and  the  right  of  every  child  to  be  born 
under  healthy  conditions.  But  the  law  of  mar- 
riage was  framed  at  a  time  when  this  aspect  had 
not  presented  itself  to  the  consciousness  of  man- 
kind; when  the  illegitimate  child  was  regarded  as 
worthless,  however  superior  in  itself,  and  the 
legitimate  child  as  valuable,  whatever  might  be 
its  hereditary  defects. 

Our  time  has  recognised  the  value  to  morality 
of  personal  choice.  It  admits  as  really  ethical 
only  such  acts  as  result  from  personal  examination 
and  take  place  with  the  approval  of  the  individual 
conscience. 

The  marriage  system  came  into  being  when 
this  sovereignty  of  the  individual  was  scarcely 
suspected,  much  less  recognised ;  when  souls  were 
bound  by  the  power  of  society,  and  when  com- 
pulsion was  society's  only  means  of  attaining  its 
ends.  Marriage  was  the  halter  with  which  the 
racial  instinct  was  tamed,  or,  in  other  words,  the 
instinct  of  nature  was  ennobled  by  being  brought 
into  unity  with  social  purpose. 

Now  love  has  been  developed,  the  human  per- 
sonality has  been  developed,  and  woman's  powers 
have  been  liberated. 

On  account  of  woman's  present  independent 
activity  and  self-determination  outside  marriage, 
the  law  must  provide  that  the  married  woman 
shall  retain  her  freedom  of  action  by  giving  her  full 
authority  over  her  person  and  property. 


366  Love  and  Marriage 

On  account  of  the  individual's  dislike  of  being 
forced  into  religious  forms  that  have  no  meaning 
for  him,  the  legal  form  of  marriage  must  be  a 
civil  one. 

On  account  of  the  individual's  desire  of  per- 
sonal choice  in  actions  that  are  personally  im- 
portant, the  continuance  of  marriage — as  well  as 
its  inception — must  depend  upon  either  of  the 
parties  and  divorce  be  thus  free ;  and  this  all  the 
more,  since  the  new  idea  of  purity  implies  that 
compulsion  in  this  direction  is  a  humiliation. 

These  are  the  claims  the  people  of  the  present 
day  make  upon  the  form  of  marriage,  if  it  is  to 
express  their  personal  will  and  further  the  growth 
of  their  personality.  The  actual  institution  of 
marriage,  on  the  other  hand,  involves  forms  that 
have  become  meaningless  and  therefore  repulsive, 
and  places  the  parties  under  the  law  in  a  position 
with  regard  to  one  another  which,  looked  at 
ideally,  is  as  far  beneath  the  merits  and  dignity 
of  the  modern  man  as  it  actually  is  beneath  those 
of  the  modern  woman. 

While  thus  the  development  of  the  ideas  of 
personality  and  of  love  have  resulted  in  these 
demands  of  increased  liberty  for  the  individual 
within  marriage,  the  idea  of  solidarity  and  evolu- 
tionism, on  the  other  hand,  demand  great  limita- 
tions of  individual  freedom.  The  knowledge  that 
every  new  being  has  a  right  to  claim  that  its  life 
shall  be  a  real  value — as  well  as  knowledge  of 
the  right  of  society  that  the  new  life  shall  be  a 


A  New  Marriage  Law  367 

valuable  one — has  involved  the  demand  of  pro- 
hibiting marriages  which  would  be  dangerous 
to  the  children,  and  of  better  protecting  the 
children  where  there  is  no  marriage  or  where  a 
marriage  has  been  dissolved. 


The  economic  factor  has  in  modern  society  an 
importance  for  marriage  which  is  felt  to  be  more 
and  more  degrading  as  marriage  becomes  estab- 
lished on  the  basis  of  love. 

Marriages  inwardly  dissolved  are  now  often 
held  together  because  both  the  parties  would  be 
in  a  worse  financial  position  after  divorce.  The 
husband  can  not  or  will  not  make  his  wife  a 
sufficient  allowance;  he  is,  perhaps,  unable  to 
realise  her  fortune,  which  he  has  invested  in  his 
business,  or  perhaps  he  has  spent  it;  the  wife 
at  marriage  has  abandoned  an  occupation  which 
she  cannot  now  take  up  again  in  order  to  support 
herself — and  so  on  to  infinity. 

But  even  happy  marriages  suffer  through  the 
wife's  subordinate  position,  economically  as  well 
as  judicially. 

It  is,  therefore,  of  great  importance  both  in 
happy  and  unhappy  marriages  that  the  wife  should 
retain  control  over  her  property  and  her  earnings ; 
that  she  should  be  self-supporting  in  so  far  as  she 
can  combine  this  with  her  duties  as  a  mother,  and 
that  she  should  be  maintained  by  the  community 
during  the  first  year  of  each  child's  life.     Similar 


368  Love  and  Marriage 

proposals  have  been  made  from  the  sociaHst  side, 
but  also  in  other  quarters. 

A  woman  ought  to  be  able  to  claim  this  subsidy 
if  she  can  prove : 

That  she  is  of  full  legal  age ; 

That  she  has  performed  her  equivalent  of  mili- 
tary service  by  undergoing  a  one  year's  training 
in  the  care  of  children  and  in  hygiene,  and — if 
possible—in  nursing  the  sick; 

That  she  will,  herself,  care  for  the  children  or 
provide  other  efficient  care; 

That  she  is  without  sufficient  personal  means 
or  earnings  to  provide  for  her  own  and  half  of  the 
children's  support,  or  that  she  has  given  up  work 
for  the  sake  of  looking  after  the  children. 

Those  who  are  unwilling  to  conform  to  the 
above  conditions  will  not  apply  for  the  subsidy, 
which  naturally  cannot  be  greater  than  what  is 
strictly  necessary,  and  which  will  only  in  excep- 
tional cases  be  distributed  for  longer  than  a 
child's  three  first  and  most  important  years. 

Those  who  renounced  the  subsidy  would  thus 
be  as  a  rule  the  well-to-do,  or  those  who  wished  to 
devote  themselves  to  self-support  and  thus  gave 
up,  either  altogether  or  after  the  first  year,  this 
help  from  the  community.  The  arrangement 
would  fulfil  its  purpose  in  those  classes  of  society 
where  at  present  the  mother's  outdoor  work,  both 
in  country  and  town,  involves  equally  great 
dangers  to  herself  and  the  children.  The  charges 
for  this  most  important  of  defensive  taxes  ought^ 


A  New  Marriage  Law  369 

like  other  similar  ones,  to  be  graduated  and  thus 
to  fall  most  heavily  upon  the  rich,  but  upon  the 
unmarried  in  the  same  degree  as  the  married. 

Inspection  should  be  carried  out  by  commis- 
sioners to  be  appointed  in  every  commune,  varying 
in  number  according  to  the  size  of  the  commune, 
but  always  composed  of  two -thirds  women  and 
one-third  men.  These  would  distribute  the  sub- 
sidy and  supervise  the  care  not  only  of  young 
children  but  also  of  older  ones.  The  mother  who 
neglected  her  child  would,  after  three  cautions, 
be  deprived  of  the  subsidy  and  the  child  would 
be  taken  from  her.  The  same  v/ould  also  apply 
to  other  parents  who  subjected  their  children  to 
bodily  or  mental  ill-treatment. 

The  mother's  maintenance  would  always 
amount  to  the  same  sum  per  annum,  but  for 
every  child  she  would  receive  in  addition  the  half 
of  its  maintenance,  until  the  number  of  children 
was  reached  that  the  community  might  consider 
desirable  from  its  point  of  view.  Any  children 
born  beyond  that  number  would  be  the  affair  of 
the  parents.  Every  father  would  have  to  con- 
tribute a  corresponding  half  of  the  child's  main- 
tenance from  its  birth  up  to  the  age  of  eighteen. 
At  present  the  community  affords  a  man  help  as 
breadwinner  for  a  family  in  the  form  of  higher 
wages  calculated  to  that  end  and  a  rising  scale 
according  to  age,  which,  however,  he  receives 
whether  he  is  married  or  single,  childless  or  the 
father  of  a  family.  But  by  paying  the  subsidy  to 
24 


370  Love  and  Marriage 

the  mother,  all  need  of  unequal  wages  for  the  two 
sexes  would  cease,  and  the  subsidy  would  really 
further  the  ptirpose  that  is  of  importance  to  the 
community :  the  rearing  of  the  children. 

The  present  system,  on  the  other  hand,  main- 
tains that  most  crude  injustice,  the  difference 
between  legitimate  and  illegitimate  children;  it 
frees  unmarried  fathers  from  their  natural  respon- 
sibility; it  drives  immarried  mothers  to  infanti- 
cide, to  suicide,  to  prostitution. 

All  these  conditions  would  be  altered  by  a  law 
which  prescribed  that  every  mother  has  a  right, 
under  certain  conditions,  to  the  support  of  the 
community  during  the  years  in  which  she  is  bearing 
the  burden  most  important  to  the  community; 
and  that  every  child  has  a  right  to  maintenance  by 
both  its  parents,  to  the  name  of  both  and — so  far 
as  there  may  be  property — to  the  inheritance  of 
both. 

Since  the  mother  must  now,  with  increasing 
frequency,  be  a  breadwinner  as  well  as  the  husband, 
it  is  just,  even  from  this  point  of  view,  that  she 
should  share  with  him  authority  over  the  children. 
But  since,  furthermore,  she  has  suffered  more  for 
them,  thus  loves  them  more  and  understands 
them  better — and  thus,  as  a  rule,  not  only  does 
more  for  them  but  also  means  more  to  them — it  is 
likewise  just  that,  whereas  the  mother  now  has  to 
be  satisfied  with  what  powder  the  father  allows  her, 
the  conditions  should  be  reversed,  so  that  the 
mother  should  receive  the  greatest  legal  authority. 


A  New  Marriage  Law  371 

When  the  husband  is  not  alone  in  bearing  the 
burden  of  breadwinner,  there  will  be  a  possibility 
of  his  duty  as  educator  being  realised.  He  will 
then  have  time  to  develop  his  qualities  in  this 
direction  and  the  growing  value  of  his  fatherly 
care  and  fatherly  love  will  lighten  for  the  mother 
the  task  of  education  which  at  present  often 
overwhelms  her,  since  with  a  growing  conscious- 
ness of  its  responsibility  this  task  is  becoming 
more  and  more  difficult  to  perform  with  her 
increasing  need  of  personal  freedom  of  movement. 

The  mother  and  child  would,  therefore,  not 
have  to  look  exclusively  to  the  father  for  the  neces- 
saries of  life,  and  they  could  not  become  entirely 
destitute  through  his  incapacity  or  downfall. 
But  he  would,  nevertheless,  continue  to  bear  his 
half  of  the  responsibility  and  the  family  would 
still  be  dependent  on  the  father  and  his  voluntary 
contributions  for  a  great  part  of  the  pleasures  of 
life,  while  he  would,  moreover,  be  freed  from  the 
often  unbearable  burdens  under  which  his  spiritual 
worth  as  a  father  and  his  family  joys  now  suffer  to 
so  great  a  degree.  Far  from  its  being  the  case — 
as  one  has  heard  certain  women  declare — that  the 
majority  of  men  are  nothing  but  egoists,  countless 
numbers  of  them  have  borne  and  still  bear  burdens 
of  slavery,  not  only  for  wife  and  children  but  also 
for  the  support  of  other  female  relations.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  prevailing  system  of  society  has 
prompted  fathers  still  more  to  enslave  themselves 
in  order  to  create  an  advantageous  position  for 


372  Love  and  Marriage 

their  children.  The  existing  rights  and  duties  of  a 
father  stand  in  immediate  connection  with  the 
right  of  inheritance,  one  of  the  greatest  dangers 
of  our  system  of  society.  For  inheritance  often 
keeps  inefficiency  in  a  leading  position,  but 
efficiency  in  a  dependent  one ;  it  favours  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  degenerate  propagating  the  race, 
above  all  if  the  parents  have  died  early,  although 
— as  it  has  been  asserted — it  is  precisely  such 
children  that  are  the  least  apt  to  have  offspring. 
It  is  unfavourable  to  the  chances  of  the  efficient  in 
this  as  in  every  other  direction,  where  birth  in 
poor  circumstances  involves  hindrances  to  educa- 
tion and  the  use  of  personal  powers  which  wealth 
permits.  On  the  other  hand,  poverty  favours 
natural  talent,  in  so  far  as  it  braces  the  capa- 
bilities, while  it  is  often  one  of  the  misfortunes  of 
heirs  not  to  experience  this  inciting  and  pleasure- 
able  tension.  It  is  only  the  strongest  or  the  finest 
natures  that  become  stronger  and  finer  through 
the  advantages  and  the  sense  of  responsibility 
that  inherited  wealth  brings  with  it.  In  the 
main,  the  productive  sources  of  society  would  be 
multiplied  upwards  as  well  as  downwards,  if 
wealth  became  personal  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the 
word,  depending  on  each  person's  contribution 
of  efficient  force,  but  the  goad  of  acquisitiveness 
would  be  broken,  through  the  limited  possibility 
of  increasing  one's  wealth  and  the  needlessness  of 
thereby  securing  the  existence  of  one's  children. 
A  new  system,  would  do  away  with  the  necessity 


A  New  Marriage  Law  373 

of  applying  to  the  state  for  increase  of  salary  for 
the  education  of  children  as  befits  their  class.  For 
if  all  children  were  placed  in  an  equal  position  by 
the  community  providing  everything — from  school 
materials  to  travelling  scholarships — for  the  com- 
plete education  of  the  bodily  and  mental  powers 
of  individuals,  an  education  in  which  a  true  cir- 
culation of  the  classes  would  take  place  by  con- 
sideration being  given  only  to  ability;  if  each 
thus  had  the  same  position  when  all  entered  upon 
their  different  careers ;  if  each  had  the  same  chances 
of  there  attaining  to  the  right  use  of  his  special 
powers,  since  he  had  had  every  means  of  training 
them;  if  society  gave — as  a  right,  not  as  a  charity 
— to  every  worker  full  care  during  sickness  and 
full  support  in  old  age,  then  the  desire  to  favour 
one's  own  children  at  the  cost  of  the  rest  would 
disappear.  The  father  whose  activity  had  pro- 
cured him  a  position  of  power,  which  during  his 
lifetime  made  his  children's  circumstances  more 
favourable  than  those  of  a  number  of  others, 
would  certainly  thus  be  able — and  to  the  advan- 
tage of  the  whole  community — to  allow  his  children 
to  enjoy  that  differentiation  and  refinement 
which,  for  instance,  the  richer  culture  of  their 
home  might  give.  But  when  the  right  of  inherit- 
ance disappeared — or  at  least  was  greatly  limited 
and  heavily  taxed — he  could  not  exempt  them 
from  permanently  securing  by  the  exercise  of  their 
own  powers  the  advantages  of  a  higher  or  lower 
kind  that  they  had  learned  to  value  at  home. 


374  Love  and  Marriage' 

When  the  difference  between  legitimate  and 
illegitimate  children  is  abolished  in  every  respect, 
the  paternal  home,  as  in  classical  and  Scandina- 
vian antiquity,  may  include  more  often  than  at 
present  the  children  of  more  than  one  living 
mother;  sometimes  even  a  mother's  home  may 
include  children  of  more  than  one  living  father. 
In  either  case  this  would  be  a  recognition  of  the 
children's  rights  which  would  leave  present  day 
customs  with  respect  to  children  born  out  of 
wedlock  a  long  way  behind. 


No  relation  shows  better  than  marriage  how 
morals  and  emotions  may  be  centuries  in  advance 
of  the  laws  within  whose  limits  they  have  been 
developed. 

Many  men  now  show  their  wives  a  delicacy  of 
feeling  and  allow  them  a  freedom  of  action  which 
render  these  fortunate  wives  unconscious  of  the 
fact  that — in  the  eyes  of  the  law — they  possess 
these  only  by  the  grace  of  their  husbands.  It  is 
not  until  relations  become  unhappy  that  the  wife 
discovers  that  all  the  legal  power  is  placed  in  the 
hands  of  one,  who  thus  has  judicial  support  if  he 
wishes  to  use  his  power  alone,  to  the  exclusion  of 
his  wife,  or  if  he  wishes  to  misuse  it,  to  the  detri- 
ment of  her  and  the  children. 

That,  in  spite  of  these  circumstances,  married 
men  so  often  voluntarily  place  themselves  in  a 
position  of  equality  with  their  wives  in  regard  to 


A  New  Marriage  Law  375 

authority  in  the  home  and  with  the  children  is  the 
best  proof  of  the  power  of  the  feelings  to  protect 
essential  values.  And  that  men,  in  spite  of  these 
marriage  laws,  have  become  more  and  more  con- 
siderate, redounds  as  much  to  their  credit  as  their 
success  in  becoming  human  beings — in  spite  of  all 
hindrances — redounds  to  that  of  royal  personages. 
Just  as  the  latter  have  more  excuse  than  others 
when  they  abuse  their  position,  so  the  same  is  true 
of  the  husband,  who  must  be  a  very  fair-minded 
person  if  an  /  will  is  not  to  be  the  conclusion  of 
a  difference  of  opinion  between  himself  and  his 
wife;  for  not  even  the  tenderest  love  will  hinder 
the  sense  of  mastery  from  flaring  up  in  the  face 
of^her  obstinate  resistance  in  one  direction  or 
another. 

To  the  majority  of  men,  however — and  this  is  the 
more  the  case  the  lower  they  are  in  other  respects 
— the  present  marriage  law  still  forms  the  great  hin- 
drance in  the  way  of  their  development  to  a  higher 
humanity.  To  have  wife  and  child  in  his  power 
makes  of  the  wicked  man  a  torturer,  of  the  low- 
minded  a  wretch.  There  is  no  exaggeration  in 
Stuart  Mill's  words,  that  so  long  as  the  family  is 
based  upon  laws  which  are  at  variance  with  the 
first  principles  of  social  life  in  other  things,  the 
law  will  be  favouring  what  education  and  civilisa- 
tion are  counteracting  in  other  spheres,  namely, 
the  right  of  force  instead  of  that  of  personality. 
Everywhere — in  morals  as  in  politics — it  is  now 
held  that  not  what  a  man  becomes  through  being 


37^  Love  and  Marriage 

born  in  a  certain  sex  or  class,  but  what  he  is  per- 
sonally worth  determines  the  respect  he  shoiild 
enjoy;  that  only  his  conduct  and  merits  can  be 
the  source  of  his  power  and  authority.  But 
marriage  reverses  the  whole  of  this  principle  of 
modem  constitutional  law  and,  therefore,  the 
social  application  of  the  principle  of  personality 
has  not  yet  gone  beyond  the  surface. 

That  the  law  continues  to  sanction  what  reality 
has  begun  to  transform  is,  as  we  have  said,  of 
comparatively  little  weight,  since  the  law  is — in 
the  better  sense  of  the  words — a  dead  letter. 
But  the  immediate  danger  to  the  individual  and 
the  indirect  danger  to  society  become  greater  in 
proportion  as  the  possessor  of  uncontrolled  power 
is  worse,  or  the  life  less  ideal  in  which  this  author- 
ity is  decisive.  And  even  when  circumstances  are 
favourable,  the  authority  of  the  husband  is  the 
more  painful  to  the  modern  woman  in  proportion 
as  she  is  more  conscious  of  being  able  to  attain 
only  through  perfect  equality  a  satisfactory  co- 
operation with  her  husband  in  every  direction. 
It  is  this  profound  vexation  of  the  modem  woman 
with  her  dependence  which,  amongst  other  things, 
makes  many  women,  even  when  they  do  not  need 
it,  wish  to  remain  at  least  self-supporting  after 
marriage. 

The  labour  market  has  hitherto  favoured  this 
desire  of  theirs.  It  can,  however,  only  be  a 
question  of  time  when  the  unmarried  women  will 
begin  to  thrust  out  the  married  ones — owing  to 


A  New  Marriage  Law  377 

the  conditions  of  competition  being  more  favour- 
able to  the  former — when  legislation  has  begun  to 
deal  with  the  present  disproportionate  state  of 
things,  where  the  wives  lower  the  wages  of  the 
husbands,  the  children  those  of  the  parents,  and 
the  result  is  the  neglect  of  the  homes  and  the 
physical  and  moral  degeneration  of  the  children. 

But  when  married  women's  labour  has  been 
limited  by  legal  ''protection  for  mothers" — 
especially  if  this  takes  the  form  proposed  above — 
and  when,  further,  the  married  and  the  unmarried 
are  protected  by  the  fixing  of  a  minimum  wage, 
an  eight  hours'  day,  and  prohibition  of  working  at 
night  and  in  certain  industries  dangerous  to  health, 
then  the  mothers  will  still  be  able — when  their 
children  have  passed  the  age  of  infancy — to  take 
part  in  several  occupations.  This  will  be  still 
more  the  case  if  a  collective  system  of  dwellings 
sets  them  free  from  the  work  of  the  kitchen  and 
renders  possible  a  good  collective  superintendence 
of  the  children  while  their  mothers  are  absent. 

But  the  best  thing  for  the  children — especially 
if  by  the  prohibition  of  home  work  they  were 
rescued  from  earning  a  livelihood  to  the  advantage 
of  their  school  and  home  life — would  be  the 
liberation  of  married  women  from  outside  labour 
through  the  higher  wages  of  their  husbands, 
while  in  return  their  home  work  would  acquire 
the  character  of  spiritual  care.  This  would  be 
brought  about  in  the  fullest  sense  by  the  mothers 
being  allowed  the  above-mentioned  subsidy  from 


37^  Love  and  Marriage 

the  community  for  bringing  up  the  children.  In 
such  an  arrangement,  approved  by  the  community, 
the  majority  might  find  that  agreement  between 
their  occupation  and  their  powers  which  con- 
stitutes the  true  joy  of  work.  For  it  can  scarcely 
be  doubted  that  even  now  the  wife,  as  a  rule,  finds 
more  employment  in  her  home  work,  however 
heavy,  for  her  special  talents,  and  thus  finds  a 
greater  satisfaction  than  the  husband,  who  often 
slaves,  not  at  the  work  he  has  chosen,  but  at  that 
he  has  been  able  to  obtain. 

But  what,  in  spite  of  this,  now  makes  women 
more  and  more  unwilling  to  undertake  the  duties 
of  the  home  and  to  prefer  outside  work,  is  that 
they  carry  out  their  domestic  work  under  con- 
ditions derogatory  to  themselves. 

First  and  foremost,  women  are  determined  to 
enjoy  the  facilities  in  their  domestic  work  which 
here  and  there  are  already  beginning  to  be  pro- 
vided. These,  however,  will  probably  not  become 
general  until  women  make  more  use  of  their 
capacity  for  thinking  out  the  most  convenient 
and  agreeable  methods,  both  for  labour-saving 
co-operation  and  for  the  performance  of  domestic 
duties,  which  will  in  any  case  always  remain; 
and  this  again  necessitates  their  educating  them- 
selves to  a  real  knowledge  of  the  questions  of  con- 
sumption and  other  details  of  modern  household 
management.  This  will  be  the  more  necessary 
as  the  servant  problem  within  a  short  time  will 
have  reached  that  point  at  which  women  of  all 


A  New  Marriage  Law  379 

classes  will  have  to  choose  between  doing  the  work 
themselves  and  the  complete  dissolution  of  the 
home.  Woman's  domestic  work  and  the  care  of 
children  will  be  facilitated  for  all  women  only  in 
so  far  as  the  educated  agree  in  maldng  new  and 
higher  demands  in  the  matter  of  domestic  arrange- 
ments as  well  as  in  practical  and  ornamental 
appHances.  They  would  thus  not  only  further 
their  own  work,  but  also  evoke  a  higher  culture  as 
regards  beauty  and  appropriateness,  both  in  archi- 
tecture and  industry. 

But  this  is  not  enough  to  enable  domestic  work 
to  regain  its  dignity. 

This  will  not  take  place  until  society  shows  such 
appreciation  of  woman's  domestic  work  as  shall 
remove  her  present  sense  of  being  kept  by  her 
husband  to  perform  a  subordinate  work,  a  work 
which  does  not  receive  the  appreciation  which  at 
the  present  time  has  become  the  absolute  stand- 
ard of  the  economical  value  of  labour,  that  of  a 
money  wage. 

The  existing  institution  of  marriage  came  into 
being  when  woman  had  no  real  field  of  employ- 
ment outside  the  home,  since  its  income  was  for 
the  most  part  received  in  kind,  and  the  wife  was 
thus  indispensable  for  turning  it  to  account.  Her 
domestic  activity  was  of  great  value  from  the 
point  of  view  of  national  economy,  and  under 
these  circumstances  the  joint  estate  was  natural. 
Furthermore,  the  mistress  of  the  house  possessed 
at  this  time — as  manager  of  the  consumption  of 


38o  Love  and  Marriage 

the  commodities  she  had  prepared  from  raw 
materials — a  freedom  of  action  and  an  authority 
which  she  now  quite  naturally  lacks  in  her  own 
eyes  and  those  of  her  husband.  It  is  of  no  avail 
that  she  has  a  legal  right  to  be  supported  by  her 
husband  according  to  his  position  and  circum- 
stances; for  if  her  task  frequently  consists 
simply  in  asking  her  husband  for  money  and 
keeping  an  account  of  its  expenditure  through  the 
cook  and  the  needlewoman,  she  has  reason  to 
feel  herself  kept  in  a  humiliating  way.  Neither 
indirectly  nor  directly  is  it  through  her  work  that 
the  food  comes  to  the  table  or  the  clothes  are 
fitted  to  the  body,  since  the  husband  alone  earns 
the  means  wherewith  she— efficiently  or  other- 
wise— keeps  house. 

For  this  reason  wives  are  becoming  increasingly 
desirous  of  personally  earning  a  livelihood.  They 
see  how  their  husbands  are  developed  through 
devotion  to  a  profession,  through  the  patience, 
the  accumulation,  and  tension  of  forces  which  this 
demands.  And  only  professional  training,  in  the 
opinion  of  modern  woman,  can  give  her  the  same 
energy,  only  a  direct  income  can  give  her  the  same 
certainty  of  her  fitness  for  work. 

But  there  is  another  expedient  which  would 
afford  these  advantages  without,  however,  driving 
women  away  from  home,  namely,  that  their  special 
training  for,  and  their  work  in,  the  field  of  house- 
keeping and  the  care  of  children  should  be  as 
serious  as  in  any  other  occupation.     Not  until  she 


A  New  Marriage  Law  381 

has  a  sense  of  the  new  value  of  her  domestic 
work  will  the  wife  be  able  to  demand  that  it  shall 
be  economically  estimated  like  any  other  efficient 
work. 

When  wives  speak  of  the  humiliation  of  being 
kept  by  their  husbands — since  they  have  more 
and  more  frequently  been  self-supporting  before 
marriage — their  husbands  always  become  pro- 
foundly ideaHstic.  They  use  fine  words  about 
the  wife's  important  mission,  the  adapting  power 
of  love,  imtil  one  asks  some  particular  man: 
whether  any  love  could  make  it  pleasant  for  him, 
instead  of  drawing  his  own  income,  to  be  obliged 
to  ask  his  wife  for  w^hat  she  considered  necessary 
for  their  joint  expenditure  or  for  his  own.  In 
spite  of  the  consciousness  of  having  herself  brought 
wealth,  or  in  spite  of  the  knowledge  of  constantly 
making  important  contributions  of  work  in  the 
home,  the  necessity  of  asking  for  mone}^  is  the 
wife's  unbearable  torment.  For  the  husband  in 
his  heart  has  often  the  same  feeling  as  she;  that 
work  nowadaj^s  means  earning  money  outside, 
since  the  management  of  an  income — in  spite  of  its 
immense  importance  to  the  strength,  health,  and 
comfort  of  the  workers  and  thus  indirectly  to  the 
whole  national  economy — is  more  and  more  over- 
looked. In  part  this  idea  of  the  husband  is  due 
to  the  very  fact  that  women  have  not  acquired 
the  new  kind  of  domesticity  which  is  necessary 
for  the  efficient  conduct  of  expenditure,  and  that 
the  husband  is,  therefore,  often  right  in  thinking 


382  Love  and  Marriage 

that  his  wife  neither  works  nor  saves,  but  only 
wastes. 

How^ever  touchingly  idealistic  a  girl  may  be  in 
this  question  before  marriage;  however  confid- 
ingly she  allows  her  husband  to  handle  her  fortune, 
after  a  few  years  of  married  life  experience  will 
turn  her  into  a  complete  realist.  However  happy 
she  has  otherwise  been,  she  will,  nevertheless, 
remember  more  than  one  occasion  when  she  has 
bitterly  regretted  the  absence  of  the  freedom  of 
action  a  separate  incom.e  gives;  when,  for  instance, 
her  husband  has  refused  to  allow  her  to  use — for 
some  ideal  purpose  or  other — the  means  which 
in  many  cases  she  herself  brought  him,  and  how 
perhaps  this  for  the  first  time  really  made  a  division 
between  them. 

The  dependence  of  woman  can  only  be  abolished 
through  the  economic  appreciation  of  her  domestic 
work.  This  appreciation  is  an  easy  miatter  when 
she  has  left  a  salaried  employment  for  her  domestic 
duties,  for  the  performance  of  the  latter  must  be 
regarded  as  worth  at  least  as  much  as  her  occupa- 
tion formerly  brought  her.  Where  there  is  no 
such  measure  of  value,  she  ought  to  receive  the 
same  amount  as  a  stranger  in  corresponding  cir- 
cumstances would  receive  in  salary  and  cOvSt  of 
keep. 

The  wife  would  thus  be  able  to  meet  her  per- 
sonal expenditure,  her  share  in  the  joint  house- 
keeping and  in  the  maintenance  of  the  children, 
when  the  subsidy  for  this  purpose  came  to  an  end 


A  New  Marriage  Law  383 

but  the  couple  were  agreed  that  the  wife's  work 
at  home  was  of  such  value  that  she  ought  rather 
to  continue  it  than  to  try  to  earn  money  outside. 
;  The  carrying  out  of  this  arrangement  need  not 
cause  any  dislocation  of  existing  conditions.  The 
wife  would  continue  to  manage  the  domestic  funds 
to  which  each  would  contribute  according  to 
agreement,  but  she  would  probably  be  better  able 
to  solve  the  problem  of  making  them  suffice  for 
their  joint  expenses.  She  would  be  perfectly 
free  to  forego  her  allowance,  as  her  husband  would 
be  to  increase  it  according  to  need  and  ability. 
The  direct  economical  appreciation  of  her  domes- 
tic work  would  transform  her  own  and  her  hus- 
band's respect  for  it  and  thus  give  wives,  on  the 
one  hand,  a  sense  of  independence  which  even  the 
conscientious  are  now  without,  on  the  other,  a 
sense  of  duty  which  in  the  case  of  the  less  con- 
scientious is  doubtless  in  need  of  strengthening; 
for  the  existing  arrangement  favours  not  only 
domestic  tyranny  on  the  part  of  the  husbands, 
but  also  inefficiency  on  the  part  of  certain  wives. 
But  the  fact  that  a  small  number  of  women  of  the 
upper  class  now  do  no  work  at  all  in  the  home, 
or  that  a  number  of  others  do  it  badly,  must  not 
obscure  the  truth  that  innumerable  women  are 
constantly  expending  in  their  homes  great  sums 
of  working  power,  without  being  able  legally  to 
claim  any  corresponding  income  of  their  own. 
This  applies  not  only  to  the  wives  but  also  to  the 
daughters  of  the  house,  who  often  work  from 


384  Love  and  Marriage 

morning  till  night,  but  are  nevertheless  obliged  to 
accept  as  gifts  from  their  parents  all  that  they 
personally  need,  and  thus  also  have  to  do  without 
anything  that  their  parents  consider  unnecessary. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  wife  in  relation  to  her 
husband.  When  unmarried — whether  she  was  in 
private  or  public  service,  a  factory  hand  or  a 
clerk — she  had  the  chance  of  in  some  measure 
providing  for  her  own  interests.  When  married, 
every  present  she  gives,  every  contribution  she 
makes  for  a  public  purpose,  every  book  she  buys, 
every  amusement  she  allows  herself,  has  to  be 
taken  from  her  husband's  money.  The  wife  who, 
in  a  farmer's  home  perhaps,  saves  thousands — 
both  by  economy  and  by  the  direct  contribution 
of  her  labour — frequently  has  not  a  silver  piece 
at  her  disposal. 

This  dependence,  as  we  have  said,  now  drives 
wives  and  daughters  from  their  homes  to  earn  a 
livelihood,  which  often  does  not  by  any  means 
compensate  economically  for  the  loss  of  their  work 
at  home.  But  they  simply  cannot  endure  to  be 
without  the  personal  income,  which  to  them  has 
become  a  more  and  more  important  value,  accord- 
ing as  their  general  freedom  of  movement  and 
their  needs  in  other  directions  have  increased — 
above  all,  through  increase  of  education  and  social 
interests. 

Woman's  present  unpaid  position  in  domestic 
work  is  an  obsolete  survival  from  earlier  condi- 
tions of  housekeeping  and  production,   as  from 


A  New  Marriage  Law  385 

the  ecclesiastical  doctrine  that  woman  was  created 
to  be  man's  helpmate  and  he  to  be  her  head. 
Women  have  thus  often  received  worse  heads  than 
nature  gave  them — and  thereby  man  has  had  less 
valuable  help  than  life  intended  for  him. 

Not  until  an  incorruptible  realism  establishes 
the  principle  within  the  family  as  elsewhere,  that 
each  retains  his  own  head  and  that  every  labourer 
is  worthy  of  his  hire,  will  idealism  find  there  a 
full  field  for  unforced  generosity  in  the  free  will 
of  mutual  help. 

While  what  is  said  above  applies  to  all  women 
who  wish  to  work  at  home,  it  need  not  apply  to 
those  who  are  able  through  the  fortune  they 
brought  with  them  to  meet  their  household 
expenses  and  those  of  the  children  and  who  wish 
in  return  to  be  free  from  the  trouble  of  domestic 
work. 

Every  attempt  at  mediation  in  the  question 
of  married  women's  property — such  as  an  obliga- 
tory marriage  settlement  and  similar  proposals — 
only  introduces  endless  complications.  It  will  be 
simple  and  clear  only  when — as  in  Russia  even 
from  the  time  of  Catherine  II — the  woman  simply 
retains  her  fortune.  The  law  ought  to  express  the 
great  principle,  that  either  party  owns  what  is  his 
or  hers,  while  those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  desire 
to  introduce  another  arrangement,  must  decide 
by  contract  how  much  of  the  property  is  to  be 
held  jointly. 

Only  a  separation  of  property  carried  out  as  a 

as 


386  Love  and  Marriage 

principle  will  be  able  to  form  the  new  and  clear 
ideas  of  justice  that  the  present  time  demands. 
A  separate  estate  places  two  individuals  side  by 
side,  co-operating  with  the  freedom  that  is  enjoyed 
by  a  brother  and  sister  or  two  friends.  Both 
parties  retain  full  right  of  decision  and  full 
responsibility.  Either  leaves  transactions  to  the 
other  only  in  that  degree  that  the  other's  qualities 
have  won  his  confidence.  Both  show  each  other 
mutual  consideration  in  the  planning  of  joint 
undertakings  and  neither  can  be  drawn  into  such 
without  a  personal  examination.  The  rights  of  a 
third  party  are,  in  these  circumstances,  equally 
well  protected  as  when  brothers  and  sisters  or 
friends  work  or  live  together.  For  the  mutual 
transactions  of  married  people  must  to  this  end 
have  the  same  publicity  as  all  other  similar  trans- 
actions between  business  partners. 


Not  only  as  regards  her  property,  but  also  in 
her  full  civil  rights  and  the  disposition  of  her  per- 
son, the  married  woman  must  be  placed  on  an 
equal  footing  with  the  unmarried.  It  is  true  that 
the  law  is  not  so  favourable  as  many  people  believe 
to  "conjugal  rights."  But  this  belief  has  sur- 
vived for  centuries  and  in  turn  influences  morals; 
moreover,  it  is  not  without  a  certain  legal  support, 
in  case  such  a  question  is  brought  into  court.  As 
a  rule,  of  course,  this  does  not  happen,  but,  on 
the  other  hand,   the  idea  of  legality — which   is 


A  New  Marriage  Law  387 

further  encouraged  by  the  Bible — influences  the 
husband's  sense  of  right  and  the  wife's  sense  of 
duty.  So  long  as  the  law  maintains  even  a 
shadow  of  "rights"  in  that  relation  which  ought 
to  be  the  most  voluntary  of  all,  it  involves  a  gross 
violation  of  love's  freedom. 

This — like  all  other  obsolete  laws — is  meaning- 
less to  the  erotically  refined,  who  live  above  the 
law's  standpoint.  But  the  lower  the  level,  the 
more  certainly  does  the  husband  enforce  his 
*' right"  under  circumstances  the  most  repulsive 
or  most  dangerous  to  the  wife,  just  as — contrary 
to  his  present  right — he  extorts  from  her  the 
earnings  of  her  labour. 

No  law  will  be  able  to  hinder  the  wife  from  con- 
tinuing voluntarily  to  allow  her  husband  to  violate 
her  person,  squander  her  property,  or  ruin  her 
children;  for  the  law  cannot  seal  up  the  sources 
of  weakness  and  conflict  which  arise  from  the 
human  being's  own  nature. 

But  what  we  have  a  right  to  demand  of  the 
marriage  law  is  that  it  shall  cease  itself  to  extend 
these  sources. 

The  law  must  be  so  contrived  that  it  leaves 
to  happiness  the  greatest  possible  freedom  for  its 
own  formative  power,  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  limits  as  far  as  possible  the  consequences  of 
unhappiness ;  and  this  can  be  brought  about  only 
by  each  party's  complete  independence  of  the 
other. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  sufficient  that  the  husband's 


2,S8  Love  and  Marriage 

guardianship  and  the  wife's  legal  incapacity  should 
cease.  Every  provision  also  which  has  for  its 
object  to  bind  the  wife  by  her  husband's  condition 
and  circumstances  must  be  revoked. 

The  majority  of  men  now  cherish  the  belief  that 
a  wife  who  leaves  her  husband's  house  can  be 
brought  back  with  the  aid  of  the  law.  This  is, 
doubtless,  a  mistake.  But  even  if  the  letter  of  the 
law  in  this  case  also  is  better  than  the  popular 
idea  of  it,  the  whole  spirit  of  the  law,  nevertheless, 
entails  the  obHgation  of  married  people  to  live 
together. 

The  more  personality  is  developed,  however,  the 
more  uncertain  it  becomes  that  every  person's 
erotic  needs  are  answered  by  this  arrangement. 
There  are,  on  the  contrary,  such  natures  as  would 
have  loved  for  life,  if  they  had  not,  day  after  day, 
year  after  year,  been  forced  to  adapt  their  wills, 
their  habits,  and  their  opinions  to  one  another. 
Nay,  many  misfortunes  depend  upon  pure  trifles, 
which  two  people  with  courage  and  foresight  might 
easily  have  dealt  with,  if  the  instinct  of  happi- 
ness had  not  been  silenced  by  consideration  for 
convention.  The  more  a  woman  has  enjoyed 
personal  liberty  before  marriage,  the  less  she  can 
endure  not  to  have  a  moment  or  a  comer  in  her 
home  which  she  can  call  her  own.  And  the  more 
the  people  of  the  present  day  enlarge  their  indi- 
vidual freedom  of  movement,  their  need  of  solitude 
in  other  respects,  the  more  will  both  man  and 
woman  enlarge  them  in  marriage. 


A  New  Marriage  Law  389 

But  even  if  those  desiring  solitude  remain  in 
the  minority,  they  must  still  be  granted  both  by 
the  law  and  by  public  opinion  full  Hberty  to 
shape  their  married  life  according  to  their  own 
requirements. 

Conventionality  and  mental  inertness  pro- 
nounce this  unheard-of,  even  immoral.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  regarded  as  equally  natural  and 
moral  that  the  majority  of  sailors  and  commercial 
travellers  should  live  for  the  greater  part  of  the 
year  apart  from  their  wives;  that  journeys  for 
scientific  or  artistic  purposes  should  separate 
married  people  for  years,  or  that — in  exceptional 
cases — one  of  them,  for  instance,  should  spend 
the  winters  as  a  gymnast  in  England  while  the 
other  is  a  teacher  in  Sweden. 

All  these  things,  it  is  thought,  are  nothing  but 
external  necessities.  And  to  these  one  always 
submits!  Ought  we  not,  nevertheless,  to  find 
room  for  the  thought  that  there  may  also  be 
necessities  of  the  soul? 

Our  time,  for  instance,  tends  more  and  more 
to  bring  together  artists  who  work  at  different,  or, 
still  more  often,  at  the  same  art.  The  nerves  of 
both  are  worn  in  the  same  way;  both  need  the 
same  freedom  of  movement  and  the  same  undis- 
turbed quiet.  But  in  the  claims  of  everyday  life 
for  mutual  sympathy  and  mutual  consideration, 
nearly  all  their  spiritual  energy  is  used  up.  They 
see  that,  if  they  are  not  to  constune  one  another's 
mental  resources,  they  must  adopt  a  system  of 


390  Love  and  Marriage" 

spiritual  separation,  which  is  possible  only  at  a 
certain  distance.  The  holiday  happiness  of  these 
natures  may  be  rapturous,  the  sympathetic  union 
of  their  souls  richer  than  any  others.  But  each 
feels  for  the  other  what  is  expressed  by  one  of 
Shakespeare's  joyous  young  women,  when  she 
calls  a  suitor  ''too  costly  for  every  day's  wear." 
Each  is  tempted  at  times  to  exclaim,  like  another 
young  woman  in  a  modern  book:  "I  want  to  be 
able  to  say,  let  me  now  for  three  weeks  be  alto- 
gether free  from  loving  you" — since  each  knows 
that  this  freedom  would  only  renew  the  feeling. 
But  now  married  people  are  bound  by  custom 
to  a  common  life,  which  often  ends  in  their  sep- 
arating for  ever,  simply  because  conventional 
considerations  prevented  their  living  apart. 

Natures  of  other  types  may  also  feel  the  con- 
straint of  narrow  dependence,  enforced  association, 
the  daily  accommodations  and  constant  considera- 
tions. More  people  ought,  therefore,  quietly  to 
begin  reforming  matrimonial  customs,  so  that 
they  may  more  nearly  correspond  to  the  need  of 
renewal  just  alluded  to.  Let  each,  for  instance, 
travel  separately,  if  he  or  she  feels  the  desire  of 
solitude;  let  one  visit  by  himself  the  entertain- 
ment the  other  does  not  care  for,  but  formerly 
either  forced  herself  to,  or  kept  the  other  from 
visiting.  More  and  more  married  people  have 
separate  bedrooms.  And  in  another  generation 
perhaps  separate  dwellings  will  have  ceased  to 
attract  attention. 


A  New  Marriage  Law  391 

■  Companionship  on  week-days  as  on  holidays, 
co-operation  in  the  satisfaction  of  everyday  claims 
as  well  as  of  life's  highest  purposes,  will,  neverthe- 
less, continue  to  be  the  form  of  married  life  chosen 
by  the  majority,  even  when  public  opinion  has 
left  room  for  other  systems  of  living.  But  full 
freedom  for  the  latter  will  not  be  won  till  the  law 
ceases  to  place  any  limit  to  the  self-determination 
of  each  partner  in  marriage. 

Another  matter  that  ought  to  be  left  to  per- 
sonal decision  is  the  degree  of  publicity  that  is  to 
be  given  to  a  matrimonial  union.  An  otherwise 
conservative  father  of  a  family  once  put  forward 
the  weighty  reasons  which  might  be  in  favour  of 
keeping  secret  a  marriage  that  was,  nevertheless, 
intended  to  be  fully  legal.  Amongst  the  reasons 
which  now  frequently  cause  the  postponement  of 
a  marriage  are,  for  instance,  the  necessity  of  com- 
pleting studies,  or  reluctance  to  hasten,  through 
sorrow,  the  death  of  parents  or  others.  The  pos- 
sibility of  not  having  to  publish  the  union  in  these 
or  similar  cases  would  spare  the  lovers  unnecessary 
waiting  without  in  any  way  encroaching  on  the 
rights  of  others. 

Further,  to  personal  determination  belong  not 
only  free  divorce  but  also  new  forms  of  divorce. 
As  divorce  itself  has  been  treated  in  the  last  chap- 
ter, we  will  speak  here  only  of  the  method  of  it. 
The  wife's  infidelity,  as  well  as  the  husband's  right 
to  refuse  divorce,  at  present  frequently  affords  an 
opportimity  for  blackmail  on   the  part   of  the 


392  Love  and  Marriage 

husband  from  his  wife,  who,  in  the  latter  case,  has 
to  buy  her  freedom,  and  in  both  cases  often  has  to 
buy  permission  to  keep  her  children.  The  husband, 
too,  may  be  exposed  to  blackmailing  by  a  wife 
who  refuses  divorce  or  who  can  prove  his  infidelity 
and  tries  to  take  from  him  the  children,  whom  he 
knows  to  be  exposed  to  corruption  in  her  hands. 
But,  since  society  and  nature  favour  the  man's 
infidelity,  while  both  are  against  that  of  the 
woman,  it  is  in  the  nature  of  the  case  that  the  wife 
often  has  difficulty  in  proving  the  husband's 
infidelity,  while  he  can  prove  hers  easily.  His 
repeated  acts  of  unfaithfulness  have,  perhaps, 
been  the  cause  of  her  single  one.  But  it  is, 
nevertheless,  he — since  there  is  no  valid  evidence 
against  him — who  has  the  children  assigned  to 
him,  or,  it  may  be,  sells  them  to  his  wife. 

The  same  applies  to  divorce  on  account  of 
''hatred  and  ill-will."  Before  a  court  which  can- 
not test  the  reasons  that  have  most  spiritual 
weight,  but  only  the  evidence  that  has  most  to 
say,  all  the  details  of  married  life  have  to  be 
dragged  forth,  all  its  wounds  inspected.  The 
evidence  which,  as  a  rule,  is  decisive  is  that  of 
servants!  The  profoundest  spiritual  concerns  of 
educated  people  are  thus  made  to  depend  upon 
the  opinion  of  uneducated  persons  on  all  the  com- 
plicated circumstances  of  an  unhappy  marriage. 
And  not  only  this:  the  result  in  most  cases  is 
determined  by  the  indelicacy  with  which  the  hus- 
band and  wife  have  drawn  their  servants  and  their 


A  New  Marriage  Law  393 

acquaintances  into  the  conflict.  If  husband  or 
wife  has  summoned  the  servants  to  witness  violent 
behaviour,  then  that  party  is  in  a  much  better 
position  in  an  action  for  divorce  than  the  one  who 
has  sought  to  the  utmost  to  preserve  the  dignity  of 
their  marriage.  There  are,  moreover,  some  suffer- 
ings of  which  no  proof  can  be  produced.  Such, 
for  instance,  is  misuse  of  ''conjugal  rights"; 
another  is  the  power  of  either  party,  under  forms 
of  outward  politeness,  to  make  life  entirely  worth- 
less to  the  other;  a  third,  the  constant  opposition 
of  two  conflicting  views  of  life. 

It  is  only  in  the  case  of  the  grossest  and  most 
palpable  evils  that  it  is  now  possible  to  furnish  the 
necessary  evidence  without  such  difficulties  as — 
both  in  the  granting  of  divorce  and  in  the  disposal 
of  the  children — may  give  rise  to  the  grossest 
injustice.  And  all  this  is  only  a  part  of  the 
humiliations  and  sufferings  which  now — espe- 
cially for  the  wife — attend  a  divorce.  Finally,  an 
action  for  divorce  is  sufficiently  expensive  to 
render  it  on  this  account  alone  a  matter  of  great 
difficulty  for  many  people  in  poor  circumstances 
to  obtain  justice. 

Such  a  system  of  divorce — which  makes  either 
partner  dependent  on  the  worst  qualities  of  the 
other;  which  calls  forth  all  that  is  indelicate  in 
the  nature  of  both ;  which  drags  their  weaknesses 
and  sufferings  before  the  eyes  of  strangers,  and 
which,  nevertheless,  provides  no  real  protection 
for  the  children — such  a  system  ought  to  give  no 


394  Love  and  Marriage 

thoughtftil  person  peace  until  its  degrading  and 
deteriorating  influence  is  abolished  and  a  new 
system,  which  shall  protect  both  personal  dignity 
and  the  children,  introduced. 


In  looking  back  upon  the  preceding,  it  would 
seem  to  result  clearly  that  nothing  that  has  been 
said  here  contemplates  the  establishment  of  a 
single  form — recognised  as  the  only  moral  one — 
for  sexual  life.  But  since  only  the  fixity  possessed 
by  the  law  is  capable  of  transforming  in  a  pro- 
found and  permanent  manner  the  feelings  and 
customs  of  the  majority,  there  is  need,  for  the 
present,  of  a  new  law  to  support  the  growth  of  the 
higher  feelings  which  will  finally  render  any  mar- 
riage law  unnecessary. 

In  connection  with  the  course  of  development 
of  sexual  morality  it  was  pointed  out  that  the 
ecclesiastical  and  legal  establishment  of  the  ideal 
of  monogamy  as  the  only  form  of  sexual  morality 
has  had  for  its  result  the  unconditional  acquies- 
cence in  the  idea  that  the  claims  of  evolution  are 
in  complete  agreement  with  existing  laws  and 
customs;  with  the  ftuther  result  that  we  are  now 
— through  the  want  of  a  recognised  right  to  mani- 
fold experience — almost  in  the  same  position  of 
ignorance  as  to  the  form  of  sexual  morality  most 
favourable  to  the  development  of  the  race,  as  we 
were  a  thousand  years  ago,  and  that,  therefore,  the 
vital  needs  of  the  race  as  well  as  the  individual's 


I 


A  New  Marriage  Law  395 

demands  of  happiness  speak  for  a  more  extended 
right  to  such  experiences. 

No  one  knows  whether,  at  the  end  of  the  new 
paths,  we  shall  not  again  be  confronted  by  the 
riddle  of  the  sphinx:  how  the  parents  are  to 
avoid  being  sacrificed  for  the  children  or  the 
children  for  the  parents.  The  one  thing  certain 
is  that  on  the  path  we  have  hitherto  followed  we 
have  arrived  at  the  sphinx.  And  all  those  who 
have  been  torn  to  pieces  at  its  feet  are  witnesses 
that  on  this  path  mankind  did  not  arrive  at  the 
solution  of  the  riddle. 

The  point  of  view  which  has  here,  throughout, 
been  the  leading  one  is,  that  in  the  same  degree 
as  life  itself  becomes  the  meaning  of  life  human 
beings  will  also  in  all  their  sensations  and  all  their 
undertakings  become  more  and  more  conscious 
of  regard  for  the  race.  It  is  thus  only  a  question 
of  time  when  the  respect  of  society  for  a  sexual 
union  shall  not  depend  upon  the  form  of  cohabita- 
tion that  makes  a  couple  of  himian  beings  become 
parents,  but  only  upon  the  value  of  the  children 
they  thus  create  as  new  links  in  the  chain  of  gen- 
erations. Men  and  women  will  then  dedicate 
to  their  mental  and  bodily  fitness  for  the  mission 
of  the  race  the  same  religious  earnestness  that 
Christians  devote  to  the  salvation  of  their  souls. 
Instead  of  divine  codes  of  the  morality  of  sexual 
relations,  the  desire  of,  and  responsibility  for,  the 
enhancement  of  the  race  will  be  the  support  of 
morals.     But  the  knowledge  of  the  parents  that 


39^  Love  and  Marriage 

the  meaning  of  life  is  also  in  their  own  lives,  that 
they  thus  do  not  exist  solely  for  the  sake  of  their 
children,  may  liberate  them  from  other  duties  of 
conscience  which  at  present  bind  them  in  respect 
of  the  children,  above  all  that  of  keeping  up  a 
union  in  which  they  themselves  perish.  The 
home  may  then  more  than  at  present  be  synony- 
mous with  the  mother,  which — far  from  excluding 
the  father — contains  the  germ  of  a  new  and  higher 
''right  of  the  family." 

When  every  life  is  regarded  as  an  end  in  it- 
self from  the  point  of  view  that  it  can  never  be 
lived  again;  that  it  must,  therefore,  be  lived  as 
completely  and  greatly  as  possible;  when  every 
personality  is  valued  as  an  asset  in  life  that  has 
never  existed  before  and  will  never  occur  again, 
then  also  the  erotic  happiness  or  unhappiness  of  a 
human  being  will  be  treated  as  of  greater  import- 
ance, and  not  to  himself  alone.  No,  it  will  be  so 
also  to  the  whole  community — through  the  life 
and  the  work  his  happiness  may  give  the  race  or 
his  inihappiness  deprive  it  of. 

For  himself,  as  well  as  for  others,  the  individual 
will  then  examine  the  right  of  renoimcing  happi- 
ness as  conscientiously  as  he  now  submits  to  the 
duty  of  bearing  imhappiness.  The  importance  to 
children  of  their  parents'  life  together  will  depend 
upon  the  kind  of  life  it  is,  when  it  has  been  seen  that 
when  all  is  said  the  new  generation  has  most  to  gain 
by  love  being  always  and  everywhere  set  up  as  the 
condition  of  the  highest  worth  of  cohabitation. 


A  New  Marriage  Law  397 

This  is  the  rich  promise  that  the  new  path 
offers;  but  the  majority  cannot  see  the  promise 
on  account  of  the  possible  new  dangers.  It  is 
this  dread  that  still  paralyses  the  courage  to  dare 
the  tmtried,  in  order  to  win  the  valuable. 

It  is  astonishing  that  those  who  tremble  for 
the  future  never  seek  consolation  in  the  past. 
They  would  there  find,  for  example,  that  when 
the  family  ceased  to  be  the  match-maker,  when 
the  guardian  could  no  longer  keep  a  woman  in  a 
position  of  legal  incapacity  and  prevent  her 
marrying — then  there  were  prophecies  of  exactly 
the  same  ''dissolution  of  society  and  of  the 
family"  as  are  now  dreaded  in  freer  forms  of 
matrimony.  But  the  same  people  who  now  laugh 
at  the  former  forebodings  are  convinced  that  the 
latter  will  be  realised;  for  man  believes  in  noth- 
ing so  reluctantly  as  in  his  own  nature's  power  of 
replacing  outward  bonds  with  inner  ones.  And 
yet,  long  before  the  new  forms  are  ready,  there  is 
an  abundance  of  the  new  feelings  which  are  to  fill 
them.  Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that,  if 
feelings  were  no  better  than  laws,  we  should  never 
have  new  laws  (Mill).  But  human  beings  will 
never  believe  in  the  possibilities  of  development 
of  their  own  feelings  until  they  leave  off  seeking 
their  strength  from  above.  They  will  never 
have  faith  in  themselves  as  pathfinders  until 
they  no  longer  believe  themselves  "guided."  As 
soon  as  a  change  has  taken  place,  it  is  regarded 
''historically,"     as     a     given     consequence     of 


39^  Love  and  Marriage" 

"rational"  causes  and  "divine"  guidance.  But 
to  look  historically  at  the  future;  to  trust  in 
regard  to  what  has  not  yet  happened  to  the  given 
consequences — for  good  <and  evil — of  the  same 
constantly  operating  causes,  this  does  not  occur 
to  the  guardians  of  society.  Their  beHef  in 
God's  guidance  is  always — retrospective. 

The  believers  in  Life,  on  the  other  hand,  know 
that  vital  needs  were  the  productive  soil  of  the 
feelings  that  gave  the  pith  to  those  laws,  whereof 
now  only  the  straw  remains.  But  the  earth  has 
not  exhausted  its  powers  of  fertility,  any  more  , 
than  the  feelings  have  lost  their  creative  force,  i 
The  believers  in  Life,  therefore,  attach  small 
importance  to  the  old  straw,  but  consider  the 
increasing  of  the  earth's  productiveness  of  supreme 
significance. 

A  great  and  healthy  will  to  live  is  what  our 
time  needs  in  the  matter  of  the  erotic  emotions 
and  claims.  It  is  here  that  there  is  a  menace  of 
real  dangers  from  the  woman's  side;  and  it  is, 
amongst  other  things,  to  avert  these  dangers  that 
new  forms  of  marriage  must  be  created. 

A  human  material  increasing  in  value  and  in 
capacity  for  development — this  is  what  the  earth 
will  produce.  The  chances  of  obtaining  this  may 
be  decreased  under  fixed,  but  favoured  under  freer, 
forms  of  sexual  life.  It  is  not  only  because  the 
present  day  demands  more  freedom  that  these 
claims  are  full  of  promise.  They  are  so  because 
the  claims  are  coming  nearer  and  nearer  to  the 


A  New  Marriage  Law  399 

kernel  of  the  question — the  certainty  that  love  is 
the  most  perfect  condition  for  the  life-enhance- 
ment of  the  race  and  of  the  individual — and 
because  the  present  time  acknowledges  the  neces- 
sity of  temporarily  limiting  freedom,  though  only 
by  means  of  laws  which  will  form  an  education  in 
love. 

Such  a  law  must,  for  the  sake  of  woman's 
liberty,  deprive  man  of  certain  of  his  present 
rights;  for  the  sake  of  the  children,  limit  the 
present  liberty  both  of  man  and  woman.  But 
these  limitations  will  all  be  to  the  final  profit  of 
love. 


Those  who  believe  in  the  perfectibility  of  man- 
kind for  and  through  love  must,  however,  learn  to 
reckon  not  in  hundreds  of  years,  and  still  less  in 
tens,  but  in  thousands. 


THE  END 


2268    137 


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